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AMERICAN PROSE

'^^^^>^'

AMERICAN PROSE

SELECTIONS

WITH

CRITICAL INTRODUCTIONS BY VARIOUS

WRITERS AND A GENERAL

INTRODUCTION

EDITED BY

GEORGE RICE CARPENTER

PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC AND ENGLISH COMPOSITION
IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

Neln gorfe

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

LONDOxN: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.

I916
Ali rights reserved

Set up and electrotyped September, 1898. Reprinted August
1899; Ju^y. 1903; February, 1907; July, 1911 ; July, 1913; July,
19x4; April, 19x6.

Norinaoti iPress

1. 8. CuBhing ft Co. — Berwick & Smith

Norwood Mmb. U.S.A.

PREFACE

This volume follows in general the plan adopted in Mr. Craik*s
English Prose and in Mr. Ward's English Poets, Its object is to
present extracts of considerable length from the works of each of
the chief American prose-writers, preceded by a critical essay and
a brief biographical sketch. Authors now living — great as has
been the temptation — are not included. The text of the extracts
has been carefully reprinted from the best editions, without any
attempt at producing uniformity in spelling or punctuation. The
source of each extract is explicitly stated. The editor is respon-
sible for the selection of the authors, the choice of the extracts,
and for the biographical sketches of Brown, Irving, Cooper, Haw-
thorne, Longfellow, Poe, Thoreau, Whitman, and Lowell. Thanks
are due to many publishers, whose names are mentioned in the
appropriate places, for their kindness in allowing the use of ex-
tracts from works still in copyright, or revised texts, still in copy-
right, of works that themselves have already passed out of
copyright. On the other hand, it must be stated that to the
singular unwillingness of the publishers of Holmes*s writings to
allow the use of a few thousand words from his principal works
is due the absence of extracts from Holmes in this volume.

Indifference to American literature, as well as ignorance of its
history, its development, and its value, is so common among us,
even with those whose passion is the study of the literatures of
other lands, that it is hoped that this volume may open the eyes

VI PREFACE

of many to its interest and beauty. English literature, from about

Dryden's time on, falls into two main branches, — that produced

in Great Britain and that produced in the United States. In the

Introduction I have shown why I believe that the prose literature

produced here during this long period, whatever may be said of

the poetry, is one of the most interesting in the world, and may

appropriately be placed, not indeed first or second, but probably

third, and certainly not lower than fourth, among modem prose

literatures. But whatever be its value to humanity at large, it

is ours; and surely no American can read sympathetically the

body of Uterature here presented without realizing — perhaps for

the first time — that even from colonial times the deepest and

most characteristic sides of our national life and feeling have been

reproduced in our prose.

In conclusion it is proper to say that the number and length

of the extracts have been determined not so much by a desire to

indicate the relative rank of the several authors as by a desire to

give a clear impression of the range and character of each

author's production, and, in some cases, of the degree to which

he expressed dominant moods of national feeling.

G. R. C.

August i, 1898.

• CONTENTS

PACK

INTRODUCTION The Editor xi

COTTON MATHER Barrett Wendell i

The Churches of New England 4

The Phantom Ship 6

The Last Days of Theophilus Eaton 8

The Piety of Thomas Shepard 10

John Eliot and the Indian Language 11

JONATHAN EDWARDS . . . Edward Everett Hale, Jr. 13

Nature and Holiness 16

Sarah Pierrepont .... 18

Sin*s Entrance into the World 19

Natural Men are God's Enemies 21

The Legacy of Christ 24

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN William P. Trent 27

Franklin's Entrance into Philadelphia 31

A Scheme for Perfection 32

The Way to Wealth 36

Letter to Mr. Strahan 44

Letter to Joseph Priestley 44

A Dialogue 45

GEORGE WASHINGTON William P. Trent 48

To the Governors of All the States 51

THOMAS PAINE Munroe Smith 62

Government and Freedom 66

An American Navy 68

The Crisis 70

The Universal Right of Conscience 72

A Profession of Faith 73

• •

Vll

VIU CONTENTS

PAGB

THOMAS JEFFERSON William P. Trent 76

Declaration of Independence 79

CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN

Thomas Wentworth Higginson 84

Adventure with a Gray Cougar 89

Scene among Indians . . , . . ^ . . . '93

Philadelphia during the Yellow Fever 97

DANIEL WEBSTER Harry Thurston Peck ioi

The Example of Our Country 105

Speech of John Adams 106

Liberty and Union 109

The Drum-beat of England .114

American Interest in Republican Government , , . • I'S

WASHINGTON IRVING .... Brander Matthews 119

Wouter Van Twiller 124

Rip Van Winkle 130

The Enchanted Steed 134

JAMES FENIMORE COOPER . Thomas Wentworth Higginson 147

Hawkeye and his Friends 153

The ^riV/ and the /^/«^rf/j/ 162

WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT

Edward Everett Hale, Jr. 172

The Battle of Otumba 1 75

The Pillage of Cuzco 180

RALPH WALDO EMERSON . . . George Santayana 187

The Scholar 194

Self-Reliance . 198

Experience 203

Nature 208

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE . . . Lewis Edwards Gates 213

The Procession of Life 221

Feathertop 224

The Revelation of the Scarlet Letter 235

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Charles F. Richardson 244

Footprints of Angels . . 248

The Valley of the Loire 252

CONTENTS IX

PAGB

ABRAHAM LINCOLN .... Harry Thurston Peck 257

First Inaugural Address 260

Letter to General McClellan 262

Address at Gettysburg 264

Second Inaugural Address 265

EDGAR ALLAN POE .... Lewis Edwards Gates 268

Shadow — A Parable 276

Ligeia 278

The Murders in the Rue Morgue 284

The Masque of the Red Death 295

The Prose Tale 299

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES . . . Norman Hapgood 303

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE . . . Richard Burton 308

Eliza's Escape 312

Topsy 319

JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY . . Edward Everett Hale, Jr. 323

The Religion of William of Orange 326

The Relief of Leyden 330

HENRY DAVID THOREAU . Thomas Wentworth Higginson 338

Style in Writing 343

A Village Festival 346

Personal Aims 348

Sounds at Evening 351

Solitude 353

Immortality 356

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL . . Charles Eliot Norton 358

The Yankee Character 363

Cambridge Thirty Years Ago 365

Keats's Poetry 380

WALT WHITMAN ...... George Santayana 383

The West and Democracy 389

Democracy 390

American Literature 393

A Night Battle 395

Unnamed remains the Bravest Soldier 397

Entering a Long Farm-Lane 398

X CONTENTS

PAGE

Manhattan from the Bay 398

Human and Heroic New York 399

America's Characteristic Landscape 401

The Silent General 401

ULYSSES S. GRANT Hamlin Garland 403

Wolves and Politicians 407

Lee's Surrender 409

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS . . William Dean Howells 417

The Duty of the American Scholar 421

Titbottom's Grandfather 423

The Puritan Spirit 427

FRANCIS PARKMAN John Fiske 433

The Black Hills 437

The American Indian 440

The Capture of Quebec 444

APPENDIX 451

INTRODUCTION

Scarcely a year goes by without some contribution of impor-
tance to the history of American literature, but much yet remains
to be done. The rise and fall of schools, the prevalence and per-
manence of certain types, the influence of foreign models, remain
still to be investigated and explained. Criticism of our literature
has scarcely begun, and it will be impossible for sound ideas of the
value and bearing of American work to prevail among our people
until scholars have studied our literature as our history and our
political system have already been studied, noting with care the
peculiar qualities that our poets and prose-writers possess as a
class, and determining, on a comparative basis, what are the essen-
tial characteristics, however precious or however mediocre, that
belong to our literature. For such criticism, materials are rapidly
accumulating. The whole history of our country, social, political,
and literary, is being thoroughly explored. Through the publica-
tion of biographies, letters, and journals, through researches into
the development of intellectual, moral, and political movements,
through our growing knowledge and appreciation of existing and
preexisting social conditions, we begin slowly to understand what
has been the course of affairs in the United States since the foun-
dation of the colonies, and slowly to realize what part literature
has played in our national development.

Our interest in the literature that has originated among us must
not be taken as a sign of our belief that this literature is to be
ranked high among the literatures of the world. That is for time
to determine. But however humble our literature may be, and
however young, it is still ours, bound to us by a thousand natural
ties. Its name is inappropriate : " American " literature is an inexact,
though unavoidable, term for the literature of the United States,
and would seem to imply larger boundaries than those we possess.

xii AMERICAN PROSE

But within the territory where this literature had its birth, affection
for it and a feeling of ownership in it are steadily increasing.
During the colonial period much of what was produced here could
scarcely be distinguished from the contemporary work of minor
British writers, though even Mather and Edwards, to an attentive
eye, present traits that distinguish them from their brethren across
the sea, and we cannot imagine Franklin as the native of any land
but our own. Certainly, from the end of the colonial period for-
ward, the character of our literature became individual almost in
proportion as the character of the nation became distinct. American
literature has never become independent of outside influences, nor
ceased often to follow foreign models. No living literature of
modem times can be independent of other literatures ; indeed, it
is the glory of English literature, on both sides of the Atlantic, that it
has been open to influences from without, freely absorbing strange
ideals, but assimilating them thoroughly. Comparative criticism
has yet to show how extensive the process of absorption and
assimilation has been with us ; but it is plain, even to the superficial
observer, that whatever may be the points of likeness between our-
selves and others, there are, at least, elements in our national
literature that are peculiarly characteristic of us as a people. In
a literature thus bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh it is
natural and human that we should take a strong and an increasing
interest.

There are, however, reasons other than those of blind affection
that make American literature interesting and important. First,
the period covered by it is, in reality, a long one. We are accus-
tomed to think ourselves a young people, and yet it is nearly three
hundred years since books in the English language began to be
written in this continent. The first books written here were con-
temporary with Shakspere's plays; the first books printed here
were contemporary with those of Milton ; the first American-born
authors were contemporary with Dryden and Defoe. The period
covered by American literature includes, therefore, the whole mod-
ern movement of European thought and life, — the movement
that began with the Renaissance and the Reformation, and that
passed, through the age in which pure reason held its sway, through
the stormy period of Romantic enthusiasm, into the strangely

AMERICAN PROSE Xlli

composite era of to-day. And although the works produced here
have not at all times been of great importance, the continuity
has been unbroken. In our branch of English literature, as in
that of Great Britain, we may trace the development of modern
culture.

American literature, again, is interesting and important because
it is the characteristic expression of a new nation, and a nation
whose life is based, on the whole, upon a single and consistent set
of principles. Though our people speak a common language, we
did not spring from a single race, but are rather formed, and are
still being formed, from many races, each contributing its quota of
men who chose voluntarily to live and act under given responsibili-
ties, and in pursuit of given ideals. These responsibilities and
these ideals are well known ; they assert the right of the individual
to complete freedom in his own affairs, except where the common
good, as determined by the representatives of each individual,
makes restriction necessary. This noble, citizen's ideal of a life
free, self-reliant, but responsible, shows itself clearly, to my mind,
in our literature, and is the source of its strongest characteristics.
Each step in our history has served to perpetuate the tendency of
citizen and author not only to search for a clear understanding of
his own mind and heart, but to look carefully at the minds and
hearts of his fellows. To this tendency, obvious in all matters of
the common welfare, is due the peculiarity of American literature,
as a whole, that it appeals, in a marked degree, to moods or states
of the national consciousness or, at least, to the consciousness of
large bodies of the people, and that it is lacking in whatever
appeals only to a select or special class. Our prose literature, in
particular, consists largely of what may be described as the ideas
of individuals on matters of wide general interest, presented for
adoption, as a series of resolutions might be, to the assembly of the
people. It is with matters of the commonwealth that our prose
literature is chiefly concerned, from Cotton Mather and Edwards
to Parkman and Curtis, — the religious, moral, political, social, and
intellectual conceptions that are common to all, and upon the basis
of which each must adjust his life. Such a condition of literature
is natural to a thorough-going democracy. It has its strong
points, and those that are weaker. It is less original, less devoted

Xiv AMERICAN FKOSE

to the search for abstract beauty ; it is, as a whole, somewhat
lacking in charm ; but, on the other hand, it is rich in ideas, and
strong in its appeal to the hearts of many, rather than to the
special tastes or foibles of the few.

American prose has an even stronger claim on our attention than
American verse. And this for two reasons. First, American prose
originated when modem prose began, at the very end of the seven-
teenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century. Before that
there had been great schools of poetry, but no great school of
prose. Prose style, until then, was unformed, obscure, whimsical,
ponderous. Prose had had its great triumphs, but they were sepa-
rate, accidental, — isolated, in large measure, from the course of
development. It was Dryden, Defoe, Steele, Addison, Swift, — the
school of journalism, of free speech, of debate and discussion, that,
breaking away from the mediaeval and Renaissance traditions, made
the prose of England what it is ; and English prose and English
ideals had a powerful influence on the development of prose style
in France and Germany. But the school of Steele and Addison
and Swift had its followers in America, as well as on the continent
of Europe ; and the graceful, well-ordered, effective prose of mod-
ern times, in a large part one of England's many contributions to
civilization, we learned from its earliest source. It was, too, natural
to our intellectual habits and our political and social institutions.
The Magnalia is the only folio in our literature ; and from Edwards
and Franklin down the modern ideal of prose is that to which we
have instinctively turned, and that in the development of which
we have had our share. Indeed, we may fairly claim that in prose
style Great Britain, France, and the United States have been the
most fortunate of nations. Germany, for instance, is still flounder-
ing in the mediaeval fashions of which England rid herself two
centuries ago, and the southern languages, though aided by classic
models, are still beguiled by the overwrought enthusiasm which
swept over Europe with tfie romantic movement, but which in
Great Britain, France, and America has yielded to the ideals of
vigorous but restrained speech which characterizes our own century.

In the second place, prose rather than poetry, has been the natural
form of expression in American literature, — a form wholly conso-
nant with our national mood, that of clear-headed, well-ordered

AMERICAN PROSE XV

aspiration. The part of literature which we call poetry is great
in its importance, but very limited in its field. Only ideas of cer-
tain sorts can be expressed by it. Its production is dependent, to
a large degree, on a state of society in which an author is free to live
a life of resolute leisure, free from all that would divert his fancy or
his imagination from communion with his dream-like ideals. Such
opportunities the American social system rarely furnishes. Our
thoughts have been of necessity immediately concerned with the
present, with what has been done and is to be done. Prose is
therefore our characteristic language, — the language of debate
and discussion and explanation, of the statesman, the preacher,
the historian, the critic, the novelist.

If, then, we exclude poetry, and consider our literature only
on its prose side, it is interesting to notice that it holds a high rank
among contemporary literatures. The period of which we are
speaking, it must be remembered, is that of the last two centuries.
During that period, as a moment's thought will show, Holland
has produced practically nothing that has been widely known
beyond its own borders, and the same may be said, up to
very recent years, of the Scandinavian and the Slavic nations.
Italy, Spain, and Portugal, after long periods of literary activity,
have contributed scarcely more than the nations just mentioned.
The important prose writing of the civilized world in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries is to be found in the two branches of
English literature, in French, and in German. To rank these four
products is neither desirable nor possible, but it may be said, on the
whole, that the prose literature of the United States, while falling
distinctly below that of Great Britain and that of France, in range
and power, might fairly be considered, according to the critic's
tastes and standards, as superior to German prose literature, as, on
the whole, equal to it, or, perhaps, as slightly inferior to it.

Leaving, now, the comparative merits of American prose, of
which it has been necessary to say so much only because they are
understood so little, we may examine our prose in itself. If we were
to judge from current criticism in Great Britain and the United
States, we might believe that there were distinct differences in
the character of the English language as spoken by the two larger
branches of the race. Ill-advised British writers comment freely

xvi AMERICAN PROSE

on our Americanisms, and we take a certain malicious but par-
donable delight in the pointing out of Briticisms. The fact with
regard to this fundamental question, it need hardly be said, is that
literary English in the United States does not differ, except infinites-
imally, from that in Great Britain. Vulgar English in the United
States, of course, differs in many minor points from colloquial and
literary English, though, as our country is younger, as education is
more generally diffused, and as the circulation — so to speak — of
population from district to district is vastly greater, these minor
points of difference are considerably less marked than the corre-
sponding points of difference in Great Britain. Our colloquial
English, by which I mean the current speech of intelligent and
educated people, differs only slightly from that of Great Britain.
These instances of divergence are due, sometimes, to survivals of
words or idioms that have now passed out of the British vocabu-
lary, sometimes to changes that have occurred in Great Britain
within the last century or two, and sometimes to similar changes in
the United States, — changes which the diverse elements in our
population and the rapidly shifting experiences of our people
have made peculiarly fitting. But, as has been said, all this
touches the literary language only in an infinitesimal degree. In
the works of the authors from which extracts appear in this volume
it is as hard to discover any real divergence in point of idiom from
the English of colonial days as it is to discover a divergence from
the idioms employed in the works of modern British writers.
Whatever difference is felt between the use of the common tongue
in American and in British literature is rarely a difference of
idiom, and can usually be traced to a characteristic habit of Ameri-
can speech and writing, which lies at the basis both of the ubiqui-
tous and picturesque American slang, and of a corresponding
quality in style, — a tendency that is, to treat words as mere in-
struments, diverting them, if occasion requires, to unaccustomed
but valid uses, playing easily, as it were, with the ordinary forms
of speech, as if we were so sure of the end to be attained that
we could afford to reach it by an unconventional path.

As regards style, it would be unwise to add to the excellent
descriptions of the various periods of the literature of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries given in Mr. Craik's Eng'

AMERICAN PROSE XVii

lish Prose, to which this volume is a necessary complement.
The same general development, due to the same general social
causes, have taken place during these periods in both branches
of English literature, as well as in French and German litera-
ture. The line of development of American literature, of course,
is much closer to that of British literature than to that of German
or French, partly because of the great similarity of social develop-
ment, and partly because it was in England that we long found
our readiest literary models. The succession of schools, how-
ever, has not been precisely the same in both countries. It
has been often remarked that European literary movements have
been felt here only a generation later than in the lands of their
origin. It would be truer to say that in the United States litera-
ture and style have been much less affected by the romantic move-
ment than in England. Indeed, with very few exceptions, our
literature is purely pre-romantic, purely eighteenth century in its
simpHcity and dignity, in its appeal to the judgment, in the degree
to which it is directed to the intelligence and sympathy of the
mass of the people, and in the extent to which it is written for
their behoof, or comfort, or amusement. This is partly because
the social centres in the United States were until recently com-
pact, neighborly little places, very much like the London of Queen
Anne's day. It is also because the conditions of political and
social life long tended to keep the citizen's mind peculiarly alert,
as in the little eighteenth-century London, to matters of common
interest and welfare.

This strong tendency to what may be called citizen's literature
has told somewhat against the more aesthetic qualities of style.
We have had few " stylists," men who stake all on the turn of a
phrase, on the mere appeal of words to the ear. Poe's effort, it is
true, lay sometimes in this direction, but, as a rule, he impresses
us, in his prose, far more by the substance than by the form of his
composition, and it is hard to find, certainly among the authors
represented in this volume, any one besides Hawthorne who paid
deliberate attention to the aesthetic elaboration of his style, and
even in him the trait was free from the morbidity which it tends
to assume in later European prose. The characteristic American
style is the plain diction of Emerson, Thoreau, and Lincoln,—

xviii AMERICAN PROSE

plain, but not without its noble dignity and reserve. It is only
in political writing, when the citizen feels that national issues hang
in the balance, and when he enunciates the principles on which his
ideal of freedom rests, that, like Jefferson and Webster, he allows
himself the sonority and exaltation of style that are then, and
then only, appropriate.

In prose literature, fortunately, substance is more than style,
and American literature, so weak in its appeal to the reader on the
lookout for ** word effects " alone, is strong in the substance it pre-
sents to the healthy mind, and in the broader characteristics of that
presentation. These broader characteristics in American prose
literature are, to my mind, resoluteness, nobility, simplicity, and
humor. From first to last, from Cotton Mather to Parkman, there
has been a marked tone of resoluteness in our literature, as if each
writer had said, " This that I utter is the truth as I see it, and I
am determined that it shall reach the ears of my fellows, and pre-
vail with them." The attitude is also one full of nobility and
simpHcity, as of men who felt the importance of the message they
bore, and the need of casting aside all mere trickery and casu-
istry in addressing their great and varied audience. The note of
humor, too, is apparent, from FrankHn on. It is the old mood
of Steele and Swift and Defoe, and of the England that laughed
with them and were swayed by them, — a mood rather serious than
merry, striving to recover a manly balance of thought and action by
contemplating the typical absurdities of foolishness and prejudice.

The wholesomQ value of such qualities as these has been some-
what obscured by recent literary criticism, born of a romantic
philosophy, which has laid stress on the minor niceties and subtle-
ties of style. Even our own taste has been long beguiled by
the delicate and unfamiliar beauty of foreign tongues, and by the
more imposing mass of foreign literatures, which it has been the
fashion to study so much more ardently than our own. But we are
turning, again, as if impelled by a deep instinct, to our native
land. We are learning to prize its history, its traditions, its civiliza-
tion, its scenery, its life, its education, its language, its literature.
Ours is the lesser branch of a great Hterature, but it has its own
virtues, particularly in those prose forms which are most fitting to
the national genius, and they are worthy of honor and praise.

G. R. Carpenter

COTTON MATHER

[Cotton Mather was born in Boston, Feb. 12, 1663. The son of Increase
Mather, minister of the Second Church of Boston, the grandson of John
Cotton, minister of the First Church of Boston, and of Richard Mather,
minister of Dorchester, he inherited with his blood the most ardent traditions
of the pristine theocracy of New England. Graduated at Harvard in 1678,
he became two years later assistant to his father at the Second Church in
Boston. Here he preached all his life ; he never travelled a hundred miles
from his birthplace. He died on the day after his sixty-Bfth birthday, Feb.
13, 1728.]

Throughout his life, a life of rare restlessness and activity,
Cotton Mather was utterly devoted to the principles which, in the
times of his father and of his grandparents, had prevailed in New
England. Until his active hfe was well begun, indeed, these old
principles still seemed dominant. Church and state, the fathers
held, should alike be subject to the rule of the Puritan clergy.
So Cotton Mather fervently believed all his life ; but, before his
life was half done. New England had ceased to believe it. More
and more impotent, more and more misunderstood, more and
more hated, he waged a losing fight, to end only with his days,
against that spirit of liberalism which from his time to ours has
been the chief trait of his native region. From his time to ours,
then, tradition has called him bigoted, foolish, wicked, at best
grotesque. Reformers are relentless haters, even of the dead.
In sober fact, as one studies him now, Cotton Mather reveals
himself, ifor all his peculiarity, as the most completely typical of
Boston Puritans. Almost the last of that stern race, and hardly
ever absent from the capital town which they had founded and
pervaded, he had all their isolation, all their prejudices, all their
errors ; but he had, too, all their devout sincerity, all their fervor,
all their mystic enthusiasm.

In the course of his life, he wrote and published more separate
books than have yet come from the pen of any other American ;
they number between four and five hundred. Many of these

B I

2 AMERICAN PROSE

were mere sermons or tracts ; but at least one was a consider-
able folio. This, the most notable and best known of his writings,
is the Church History of New England entitled Magnalia Christi
Americana, According to his diary, he conceived the idea of
writing it in 1693 ; it was published in 1702. Whoever knows the
history of New England will recognize these dates as intervening
between that tragedy of Salem witchcraft which broke the political
power of the clergy, and the final conquest of Harvard College, the
ancestral seminary of Puritan doctrine, by the liberal party which
has dominated Harvard ever since. This historical circumstance
throws on the Magnalia a light which has been too little remarked.

The book is commonly criticised as if it were a history written
in the modern scientific spirit. Really it was a fervent controver-
sial effort to uphold the ideals and the traditions of the Puritan
fathers, in such manner as should revive their failing spirit among
those whom Cotton Mather thought their degenerate descendants.
In its whole conception it is such a history not as that of Thucydi-
des, but as Plutarch's. It has been aptly described as the prose
epic of New England Puritanism. In an epic spirit it tells the
facts of New England history ; it recounts the lives of the early
governors and ministers ; it describes the founding of Harvard
College ; it sets forth the doctrine and the discipline of the New
England churches ; and it details the attacks of the devil on these
strongholds of the Lord, particularly in the forms of witchcraft
and of Indian warfare. Throughout it is animated by a fervent
desire to present all its material in an ideal aspect ; its purpose is
not so much to tell the truth and shame the devil as to shame him
by pointing out what truth ought to be. As a record of fact, then,
the Magnalia is untrustworthy ; as a record, on the other hand, of
Puritan ideals it is priceless. Whoever grows thus sympathetically
to know it, grows more and more to feel it a good book and a
brave one.

To be sure, even those who like the Magnalia best find it quaint.
In 1702, when it was published, John Dryden was already dead ;
and the literary style now recognized as characteristic of eigh-
teenth century England was fairly established. Cotton Mather
meanwhile, in that Boston which one of his German contempora-
ries mentioned in correspondence as " a remote West Indian wil-

COTTON MATHER 3

derness," thought and wrote after fashions which Europe had dis-
carded for above a generation. Published in the eighteenth cen-
tury, the Magnalia, both substantially and formally, is a work of
the school of Burton, or of Fuller, or of whoever else made the
quaintly garrulous folios of seventeenth century literature. Fairly to
judge it, we must compare it not with its contemporaries, but with
its predecessors. It has the fantastic oddity, the far-fetched
pedantry, the giant-winded prolixity of the days when folios were
normal. It has meanwhile positive merits of style which have
not been so clearly remembered. It is never obscure ; it never
lacks spirit ; and it possesses a rhythmical dignity, a sustained and
sonorous movement, beyond the power of later times. These
formal traits, as one grows to know them, become fascinating j nor
is the fascination of the Magnalia merely a matter of form. Its
ideals of life, which Cotton Mather tried to show that the fathers
of New England realized on earth, stand forth by and by as heroic.
Until very lately the struggle between the austere Calvinism of
which he was the champion, and the devout free thought with
which New England has replaced it was still so fresh that no one
who could frankly sympathize with either side, could be quite fair
to the other. At last, however, like the older struggles between
Guelphs and Ghibellines, or Cavaliers and Roundheads, the heart-
breaking controversies of God-fearing New England are fading,
with New England herself, into an historic past. Few men
to-day, of any creed, believe what Cotton Mather wrought through
his whole life to maintain ; and had he not failed, the hatred of his
memory might still inevitably persist in all its freshness. But
to-day theocracy with all its vices and all its heroisms, is as dead
as the gods of Olympus. Regardless of the cause to which its
epic champion devoted his Hfe, we can now do justice to his
spirit and his character. So judging him, not only as a writer, but
as a man, one grows more and more to feel that whatever his
oddities, whatever his faults and weaknesses, he belongs among
the great men of our country. In the sustained faithfulness of his
devotion to those ideals which for him constituted the truth, he
was a brave and worthy precursor of any braveries to come.

Barrett Wendell

AMERICAN PROSE

THE CHURCHES OF NEW ENGLAND

I WRITE the Wonders of the Christian Religion, flying from the
Depravations of Europe^ to the American Strand : And, assisted
by the Holy Author of that Religion, I do, with all Conscience of
Truth, required therein by Him, who is the Truth it self, report
the Wonderful Displays of His Infinite Power, Wisdom, Goodness,
and Faithfulness, wherewith His Divine Providence hath Irradiated
an Indian Wilderness,

I Relate the Considerable Matters, that produced and attended
the First Settlement of Colonies, which have been Renowned for
the Degree of Reformation, Professed and Attained by Evangelical
Churches, erected in those Ends of the Earth : And a Field being
thus prepared, I proceed unto a Relation of the Considerable
Matters which have been acted thereupon.

I first introduce the Actors, that have, in a more exemplary
manner served those Colonies ; "and give Remarkable Occurrences,
in the exemplary Lives of many Magistrates, and of more Minis-
ters, who so Lived, as to leave unto Posterity, Examples worthy
of Everlasting Remembrance,

I add hereunto, the Notables of the only Protestant University,
that ever shone in that Hemisphere of the New World ; with par-
ticular Instances of Criolians, in our Biography, provoking the
whole World, with vertuous Objects of Emulation.

I introduce then, the Actions of a more Eminent Importance,
that have signalized those Colonies ; Whether the Establishments,
directed by their Synods ; with a Rich Variety of Synodical and
Ecclesiastical Determinations ; or, the Disturbances, with which
they have been from all sorts of Temptations and Enemies Tem-
pestuated ; and the Methods by which they have still weathered
out each Horrible Tempest,

And into the midst of these Actions, I interpose an entire Book,
wherein there is, with all possible Veracity, a Collection made, of
Memorable Occurrences, and amazing Judgments and Mercies,
befalling many particular Persons among the People of New-
England,

Let my Readers expect all that I have promised them, in this

COTTON MATHER 5

Bill of Fair; and it may be that they will find themselves enter-
tained with yet many other Passages, above and beyond their Ex-
pectation, deserving likewise a room in History : In all which, there
will be nothing, but the Author's too mean way of preparing so
great Entertainments, to Reproach the Invitation.

§ 3. It is the History of these Protestants, that is here at-
tempted : Protestants that highly honoured and affected The
Church of England, and humbly Petition to be a Part of it ;
But by the Mistake of a few powerful Brethren, driven to seek a
place for the Exercise of the Protestant Religion, according to the
Light of their Consciences, in the Desarts of America, And in
this Attempt I have proposed, not only to preserve and secure
the Interest of Religion, in the Churches of that little Country
New- England, so far as the Lord Jesus Christ may please to Bless
it for that End, but also to offer unto the Churches of the Refor-
mation, abroad in the World, some small Memorials, that may be
serviceable unto the Designs of Reformation, whereto, I believe,
they are quickly to be awakened. ... In short, The First Age
was the Golden Age : To return unto That, will make a Man a
Protestant, and I may add, a Puritan. 'Tis possible, that our Lord
Jesus Christ carried some Thousands of Reformers into the Retire-
ments of an American Desart, on purpose, that, with an oppor-
tunity granted unto many of his Faithful Sen'ants, to enjoy the
precious Liberty of their Ministry, tho* in the midst of many
Temptations all their days. He might there, To them first, and
then By them, give a Specimen of many Good Things, which He
would have His Churches elsewhere aspire and arise unto : And
This being done. He knows not whether there be not All done,
that New-England was planted for ; and whether the Plantation
may not, soon after this, Come to Nothing: Upon that Expres-
sion in the Sacred Scripture, Cast the unprofitable Servant into
Outer Darkness, it hath been imagined by some, That the Re-
giones Exterce of America, are the Tenebrce Exteriores, which the
Unprofitable are there condemned unto. No doubt, the Authors
of those Ecclesiastical Impositions and Severities, which drove the
EngHsh Christians into the Dark Regions of America, esteemed
those Christians to be a very unprofitable sort of Creatures. But

6 AMERICAN PROSE

behold, ye European Churches, There are Golden Candlesticks
[more than twice Seven times Seven !'\ in the midst of this Outer
Darkness; Unto the upright Children of Abraham, here hath
arisen Light in Darkness, And let us humbly speak it, it shall be
Profitable for you to consider the Light, which from the midst of
this Outer Darkness, is now to be Darted over unto the other side
of the Atlantick Ocean. But we must therewithal ask your Prayers,
that these Golden Candlesticks may not quickly be Removed out of
their place I

[^Magnalia Christi Americana; or, the Ecclesiastical History of New- Eng-
land, from Its First Planting in the Year 1620 unto the Year of our Lord,
i6g8. By the Reverend and Learned Cotton Mather, M. A. And Pastor of
the North Church in Boston, New-England. London : Printed for Thomas
Parkhurst, at the Bible and Three Crowns in Cheapside, 1702. General Intro-
duction, sections I, 3.]

THE PHANTOM SHIP

Behold, a Fourth Colony oi New- English Christians, in a manner
stoln into the World, and a Colony, indeed, constellated with many
Stars of the First Magnitude, The Colony was under the Conduct
of as Holy, and as Prudent, and as Genteel Persons as most that
ever visited these Nooks of America; and yet these too were
Try'd with very humbling Circumstances.

Being Londoners, or Merchants, and Men of Traffick and Busi-
ness, their Design was in a manner wholly to apply themselves
unto Trade ; but the Design failing, they found their great Estates
to sink so fast, that they must quickly do something. Whereupon in
the Year 1646 gathering together almost all the Strength which was
left *em, they Built one Ship more, which they fraighted for Eng-
land with the best part of their Tradable Estates ; and sundry of
their Eminent Persons Embarked themselves in her for the Voyage.
But, alas, the Ship was never after heard of ! She foundred in the
Sea j and in her were lost, not only the Hopes of their future Trade,
but also the Lives of several Excellent Persons, as well as divers
Manuscripts of some great Men in the Country, sent over for the
Service of the Church, which were now buried in the Ocean, The
fuller Story of that grievous Matter, let the Reader with a just

COTTON MATHER 7

Astonishment accept from the Pen of the Reverend Person, who
is now the Pastor of New-Haven, I wrote unto him for it, and
was thus Answered.

" Reverend and Dear Sir, In Compliance with your Desires,
I now give you the Relation of that Apparition of a Ship in tht
Air, which I have received from the most Credible, Judicious and
Curious Surviving Observers of it.

" In the Year 1647 besides much other lading, a far more Rich
Treasure of Passengers, (Five or Six of which were Persons of
chief Note and Worth in New-Haven) put themselves on Board
a New Ship, built at Rhode- Island, of about 150 Tuns ; but so
walty, that the Master, (Lamberion) often said she would prove
their Grave. In the Month oi January, cutting their way thro'
much Ice, on which they were accompanied with the Reverend
Mr. Davenport, besides many other Friends, with many Fears, as
well as Prayers and Tears, they set Sail. Mr. Davenport in Prayer
with an observable Emphasis used these Words, Lord, if it be thy
pleasure to bury these our Friends in the bottom of the Sea, they
are thine; save them! The Spring following no Tidings of these
Friends arrived with the Ships from England : New • Have n''s Heart
began to fail her : This put the Godly People on much Prayer,
both Publick and Private, That the Lord would (if it was his
Pleasure) let them hear what he had done with their dear Friends,
and prepare them with a suitable Submission to his Holy Will. In
June next ensuing, a great Thunder-Storm arose out of the North-
West; after which, (the Hemisphere being serene) about an hour
before Sun-set a Ship of like Dimensions with the aforesaid, with
her Canvas and Colours abroad (tho* the Wind Northernly) ap-
peared in the Air coming up from our Harbour's Mouth, which
lyes Southward from the Town, seemingly with her Sails filled
under a fresh Gale, holding her Course North, and continuing
under Observation, Sailing against the Wind for the space of half
an Hour. Many were drawn to behold this great Work of God ;
yea, the very Children cry'd out, There^s a Brave Ship ! At length,
crouding up as far as there is usually Water sufficient for such a
Vessel, and so near some of the Spectators as that they imagined
a Man might hurl a Stone on Board her, her Maintop seem'd to

8 AMERICAN PROSE

be blown off, but left hanging in the Shrouds ; then her Missen-
top ; then all her Masting seemed blown away by the Board :
Quickly after the Hulk brought into a Careen, she overset, and so
vanished into a smoaky Cloud, which in some time dissipated, leav-
ing, as everywhere else, a clear Air. The admiring Spectators could
distinguish the several Colours of each Part, the Principal Riging,
and such Proportions, as caused not only the generality of Persons
to say. This was the Mould of their Ship, and thus was her Tragic k
End: But Mr. Davenport also in publick declared to this Effect,
That God had condescended, for the quieting of their afflicted Spirits,
this Extraordinary Account of his Sovereign Disposal of those for
whom so many Fervent Prayers were made continually. Thus I
am, Sir,

Your Humble Servant,

James Pierpont.

Reader, There being yet living so many Credible Gentlemen,
that were Eye-Witnesses of this Wonderful Thing, I venture to
Publish it for a thing as undoubted, as *tis wonderful.

[^Magnalia, book i, " Antiquities, or Field prepared for Considerable Things
to be Acted thereupon," chapter 6, section 6.]

THE LAST DAYS OF THEOPHILUS EATON

His Eldest Son he maintained at the College until he proceeded
Master of Arts ; and he was indeed the Son of his Vows, and
a Son of great Hopes. But a severe Catarrh diverted this Young
Gentleman from the Work of the Ministry whereto his Father had
once devoted him ; and a Malignant Fever then raging in those
Parts of the Country, carried off him with his wife within Two
or Three Days of one another. This was counted the sorest
of all the Trials that ever befel his Father in the Days of the
Years of his Pilgrimage ; but he bore it with a Patience and Com-
posure of Spirit which was truly admirable. His dying Son look'd
earnestly on him, and said, Sir, What shall we do I Whereto,
with a well-ordered Countenance, he replied. Look up to God !
And when he passed by his Daughter drowned in Tears on this
Occasion, to her he said, Remember the Sixth Commandment,

COTTON MATHER 9

Hurt not your self with Immoderate Grief; Remember Job, who
saidy The Lord hath given, and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed
be the Name of the Lord ! You may mark what a Note the Spirit
of God put upon it ; in all this Job sinned not, nor charged God
foolishly : God accounts it a charging of him foolishly^ when we
don't submit unto his Will patiently. Accordingly he now gov-
erned himself as one that had attained unto the Rule of Weeping
as if we wept not; for it being the Lord's Day, he repaired unto
the Church in the Afternoon, as he had been there in the Fore-
noon, though he was never like to see his Dearest Son alive any
more in this World. And though before the First Prayer began,
a Messenger came to prevent Mr. Davenport's praying for the
Sick Person, who was now Dead, yet his Affectionate Father
alter'd not his Course, but Wrote after the Preacher as formerly ;
and when he came Home he held on his former Methods of
Divine Worship in his Family, not for the Excuse of Aaron, omit-
ting any thing in the Service of God. In like sort, when the
People had been at the Solemn Interment of this his Worthy Son,
he did with a very Unpassionate Aspect and Carriage then say.
Friends, I thank you all for your Love and Help, and for this
Testimony of Respect unto me and mine : The Lord hath given,
and the Lord hath taken; blessed be the Name of the Lord!
Nevertheless, retiring hereupon into the Chamber where his
Daughter then lay Sick, some Tears were observed falling from
him while he uttered these Words, There is a difference between
a sullen Silence or a stupid Senselessness under the Hand of God,
and a Child- like Submission thereunto.

Thus continually he, for about a Score of Years, was the Glory
and Pillar of New- Haven Colony. He would often say. Some
count it a great matter to Die well, but I am sure 'tis a great mat-
ter to Live well. All our Care should be while we have our Life
to use it well, and so when Death puts an end unto that, it will
put an end unto all our Cares, But having Excellently managed
his Care to Live well, God would have him to Die well, without
any room or time then given to take any Care at all ; for he
enjoyed a Death sudden to every one but himself ! Having Wor-
shipped God with his Family after his usual manner, and upon
some Occasion with much Solemnity charged all the Family to

lO AMERICAN PROSE

carry it well unto their Mistress who was now confined by Sick-
ness, he Supp'd, and then took a turn or two abroad for his Medi-
tations. After that he came in to bid his Wife Good-nighty before
he left her with her Watchers; which when he did, she said,
Methinks you look sad ! Whereto he reply'd, The Differences
risen in the Church of Hartford make me so ; she then added,
Lei us e'en go back to our Native Country again ; to which he
answered, You may, [and so she did] but I shall Die here. This
was the last Word that ever she heard him speak ; for now retir-
ing unto his Lodging in another Chamber, he was overheard
about midnight fetching a Groan ; and unto one, sent in presently
to enquire how he did, he answered the Enquiry with only saying.
Very III! And without saying any more, he fell asleep in Jesus :
In the Year 1657 loosing Anchor from New- Haven for the better.

Sedes, ubi Fata; Quietas

Ostendunt.

Now let his Gravestone wear at least the following

EPITAPH

New-England's Glory, full ^/Warmth and Light,
Stole away (^and said nothing) in the Night.

[^Magnalia^ book ii, ** Lives of the Governours, and the Names of the Magis-
trates, that have been Shields unto the Churches of New England (until the
Year 1686)," chapter 9, sections 9 and 10.]

THE PIETY OF THOMAS SHEPARD

As he was a very Studious Person, and a very lively Preacher ;
and one who therefore took great Pains in his Preparations, for
his publick Labours, which Preparations he would usually finish
on Saturday, by two a Clock in the Afternoon ; with Respect
whereunto he once used these Words, God will curse that Man's
Labours, that lumbers up and down in the World all the Week, and
then upon Saturday in the Afternoon goes to his Study ; whereas
God knows, that Time were little enough to pray in and weep in,
and get his Heart into a fit Frame for the Duties of the approach-

COTTON MATHER II

ing Sabbath, So the Character of his daily Conversation, was A
Trembling Walk with God. Now to take true Measures of his
Conversation, one of the best Glasses that can be used, is the
Diary, wherein he did himself keep the Remembrances of many
Remarkables that passed betwixt his God and himself; who were
indeed A sufficient Theatre to one another. It would give some
Inequality to this Part of our Church History, if all the Holy
Memoirs left in the Private Writings of this Walker with God,
should here be Transcribed : But I will single out from thence a
few Passages, which might be more agreeably and profitably ex-
posed unto the World.

\^Magnalia, book iii, " Lives of Many Reverend, Learned, and Holy Divines
(arriving such from Europe to America) by whose Evangelical Ministry the
Churches of New- England have been Illuminated," chapter 5, section 17.]

JOHN ELIOT AND THE INDIAN LANGUAGE

The First Step which he judg'd necessary now to be taken by
him, was to learn the Indian Language ; for he saw them so stupid
and senseless, that they would never do so much as enquire after
the Religion of the Strangers now come into their Country, much
less would they so far imitate us, as to leave off their beastly way
of living, that they might be Partakers of any Spiritual Advantage
by us : Unless we could first address them in a Language of their
own. Behold, new Difficulties to be surmounted by our indefati-
gable Eliot ! He hires a Native to teach him this exotick Lan-
guage, and with a laborious Care and Skill, reduces it into a
Grammar which afterwards he published. There is a letter or
two of our Alphabet, which the Indians never had in theirs ; tho'
there were enough of the Dog in their Temper, there can scarce
be found an R in their Language; (any more than in the Language
of the Chinese, or of the Greenlanders) save that the Indians to
the Northward, who have a peculiar Dialect, pronounce an R
where an N is pronounced by our Indians ; but if their Alphabat
be short, I am sure the Words composed of it are long enough to
tire the Patience of any Scholar in the World ; they are Sesquipe-
dalia Vcrba^ of which their Linguo is composed ; one would think,

12 AMERICAN PROSE

they had been growing ever since Babei, unto the Dimensions to
which they had now extended. For instance, if my Reader will
count how many Letters there are in this one Word, Numma-
tachekodtantamooonganunnonashy when he has done, for his Re-
ward I'll tell him, it signifies no more in English, than our Lusts,
and if I were to translate, our Loves ; it must be nothing shorter
than Noowomantamtnooonkanunonnash, Or, to give my Reader
a longer Word than either of these, Kummogkodonattoottummoo-
etiteaongannunnonashy is in English, Our Question : But I pray.
Sir, count the Letters ! Nor do we find in all this Language the
least Affinity to, or Derivation from any European Speech that
we are acquainted with. I know not what thoughts it will pro-
duce in my Reader, when I inform him, that once finding that
the Daemons in a possessed young Woman, understood the Latin
and Greek and Hebrew Languages, my Curiosity led me to make
Trial of this Indian Language, and the DcBtnons did seem as if
they did not understand it. This tedious Language our Eliot (the
Anagram of whose Name was Toile) quickly became a Master
of; he employ'd a pregnant and witty Indian, who also spoke
English well, for his Assistance in it ; and compiling some Dis-
courses by his Help, he would single out a Word, a Noun, a Verb,
and pursue it, through all its Variations : Having finished his
Grammar, at the close he writes. Prayers and Pains thro' Faith
in Christ Jesus will do any thing ! And being by his Prayers and
Pains thus furnished, he set himself in the Year 1646 to preach
the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, among these Desolate Out-
casts.

[^Magnalia, book iii, part 3, part 3.]

JONATHAN EDWARDS

[Jonathan Edwards was born, of ministerial stock, at East Windsor, Conn.,
Oct. 5, 1703, the same year as John Wesley. For the greater part of his life
he was a parish minister of immense influence with his congregation. He
was settled at Northampton, Mass., in 1727, where he remained until 1750.
Disntiissed for his views on qualifications for full communion, he was shortly
called to Stockbridge, where he remained six years. But he was also known
far beyond the borders of his parish as a preacher, and in the latter half of
his life he became famous at home and abroad by his works on metaphysical
theology, particularly The Freedom of the Will^ I754» and Original Sin, 1758.
In 1757 he was called to Princeton as President, but died the next year, on
March 22. His metaphysics and theology, and his powers as a logician, mat-
ters a little aside from the following study, are excellently presented in a Life
by Rev. A. V. G. Allen, Boston, 1891. The standard text of his works, which
has been followed in the extracts, is that of the so-called Worcester edition of
1809, reprinted in New York in 1847.]

Jonathan Edwards and Benjamin Franklin are like enormous
trees (say a pine and an oak), which may be seen from a great
distance dominating the scrubby, homely, second growth of our
provincial literature. They make an ill-assorted pair, — the cheery
man of the world and the intense man of God, — but they owe
their preeminence to the same quality. Franklin, it is true, is
remarkable for his unfailing common sense, a quality of which
Edwards had not very much, his keenest sense being rather un-
common. But it was not his common sense, but the cause of his
common sense, namely, his faculty of realization, that made Frank-
lin eminent. This faculty is rare among men, but it was possessed
by Franklin to a great degree. His perceptions of his surroundings
— material, intellectual, personal, social, political — had power to
affect his mind and action. He took real account of his circum-
stances.

Now this power of realization was the one thing which makes
Edwards remarkable in literature. It is true that he was very

14 AMERICAN PROSE

devout, very logical, very hard-working, but so were many other
men of his time. The remarkable thing about Edwards (and it
explains his other qualities) was that he realized his thoughts, and
through that fact alone made his hearers realize them. Doubtless
the things that were real to Edwards were not the things that were
real to Franklin. The things that were real to Franklin were phe-
nomenal to Edwards and of little concern to him. Franklin, in-
tensely curious about the processes of nature, managed to snatch
the lightning from the clouds; but Edwards, who regarded all
externality as the thought of God, was content, as a rule, to
wander in the woods, intent on the Creator and oblivious of the
creation. Franklin, extremely interested in the political affairs of
the day, snatched also the sceptre from the tyrant or helped to
snatch it. Edwards took no concern in current politics, but
devoted his Hfe to restoring a rebellious world to its lawful God.
Franklin may have thought Edwards a fanatic, and Edwards would
have thought Franklin a reprobate. But they were men of much
the same sort of mental power.

There can be no doubt that Edwards conceived his ideas in a
manner " more vivid, lively, forcible, firm, steady " than most peo-
ple. Hence his ideas were powers within him, as other people's
were not : they made him do this and that, as other people's do
not. "Once more," says his biographer (of our own time), "he
was overcome and burst into loud weeping, as he thought how
meet and suitable it was that God should govern the world, order-
ing all things according to his own pleasure." We can receive
that idea into our minds without disturbance of any kind ; with
Edwards it often had physical consequences. It is often said
that Edwards pressed his logic too far. The fact was that certain
ideas were real to him. Hence he was led to state, for instance,
that " when the saints in heaven shall look upon the damned in
hell, it will serve to give them a greater sense of their own happi-
ness." Few persons reading the sermon on The Wicked Useful
in their Destruction Only, will dissent from its doctrine on any
logical ground. We dissent from it because the ideas called up
are too feeble to hold their own before the inconsistent ideas of
sympathy, tolerance, indifferentism, humanity, which are more real
to us than they were to Edwards.

JONATHAN EDWARDS 1 5

It is this power of realizing his conceptions, making them forces
in his mind, that made Edwards great. He went to Enfield once
and preached to a congregation which had assembled in a very
ordinary any-Sunday mood. In his quiet way, leaning upon one
arm and without gesture, his eye fixed upon some distant part of
the nieeting-house, he preached a sermon which New England
" has never been able to forget.'* The congregation was aroused
beyond belief : he had not gone far before the tears and outcries
drowned his voice, and he paused to rebuke his hearers and to bid
them allow him to go on. Few of us, probably, have ever seen
such an effect caused by the spoken word alone. Turn to the
sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Qody and see if you find
an explanation of such emotion in others, or if you feel any especial
emotion yourself. The ideas will be wholly unreal to many of us,
as unreal as the legends of King Arthur, or even more so ; they
have no force when we conceive them. They were real to Ed-
wards, and he made them real to his congregation : to Edwards
they were but minor corollaries of ideas which sustained and up-
lifted him ; to the congregation they were at the time all-powerful
and of terrible effect.

As we read Edwards to-day we can perceive this power, but we
cannot do much more. We cannot reaUze his ideas ourselves until
we devitalize a whole host of ideas of our own time. We must
probably content ourselves with imagining what has been. Nor is
it especially profitable to examine the technical means by which
he succeeded in the "great aim of literature. Edwards is an ex-
ample of the power of unrhetorical rhetoric. His most marked
rhetorical means were negative : he instinctively avoided what was
likely to stand between him and his hearer, and so his personality
had full sway. But Edwards' literary significance at present lies
chiefly in the fact that he was a New Englander who made the
world aware of the New England mind. That he should have
been a theologian was natural ; so was Cotton Mather, chiefly,
who had performed a somewhat similar service half a century
before. Each had presented what had long been the dominant
factor in New England life.

Edward Everett Hale, Jr.

1 6 AMERICAN PROSE

NATURE AND HOLINESS

From about that time, I began to have a new kind of appre-
hensions and ideas of Christ, and the work of redemption, and
the glorious way of salvation by him. An inward, sweet sense
of these things, at times, came into my heart ; and my soul was
led away in pleasant views and contemplations of them. And
my mind was greatly engaged to spend my time in reading and
meditating on Christ, on the beauty and excellency of his person,
and the lovely way of salvation by free grace in him. I found
no books so delightful to me, as those that treated of these sub-
jects. Those words, CanL ii. i, used to be abundantly with me,
/ am the Rose of Sharon^ and the Lily of the valleys. The words
seemed to me sweetly to represent the loveliness and beauty of
Jesus Christ. The whole book of Canticles used to be pleasant to
me, and I used to be much in reading it, about that time ; and found,
from time to time, an inward sweetness, that would carry me away
in my contemplations. This I know not how to express otherwise,
than by a calm, sweet abstraction of soul from all the concerns of
this world ; and sometimes a kind of vision, or fixed ideas and
imaginations, of being alone in the mountains, or some solitary
wilderness, far from all mankind, sweetly conversing with Christ,
and rapt and swallowed up in God. The sense I had of divine
things would often of a sudden kindle up, as it were, a sweet burn-
ing in my heart ; an ardor of soul that I know not how to express.

Not long after I first began to experience these things, I gave
an account to my father of some things that had passed in my
mind. I was pretty much affected by the discourse we had
together; and when the discourse was ended, I walked abroad
alone, in a solitary place in my father's pasture, for contem-
plation. And as I was walking there, and looking up on the
sky and clouds, there came into my mind so sweet a sense of
the glorious majesty and grace of God, that I know not how
to express. I seemed to see them both in a sweet conjunction ;
majesty and meekness joined together ; it was a sweet and gentle,
and holy majesty ; and also a majestic meekness ; an awful sweet-
ness j a high, and great, and holy gentleness.

JONATHAN EDWARDS 1 7

After this my sense of divine things gradually increased, and
became more and more lively, and had more of that inward
sweetness. The appearance of every thing was altered ; there
seemed to be, as it were, a calm, sweet cast, or appearance of
divine glory, in almost every thing. God's excellency, his wis-
dom, his purity and love, seemed to appear in every thing; in
the sun, and moon, and stats ; in the clouds and blue sky ; in the
grass, flowers, trees ; in the water, and all nature ; which used
greatly to fix my mind. I often used to sit and view the moon
for continuance ; and in the day spent much time in viewing the
clouds and sky, to behold the sweet glory of God in these things ;
in the mean time, singing forth, with a low voice, my contempla-
tions of the Creator and Redeemer. And scarce anything, among
all the works of nature, was as sweet to me as thunder and light-
ning; formerly, nothing had been so terrible to me. Before, I
used to be uncommonly terrified with thunder, and to be struck
with terror when I saw a thunder storm rising ; but now, on the
contrary, it rejoiced me. I felt God, so to speak, at the first
appearance of a thunder storm ; and used to take the opportunity,
at such times, to fix myself in order to view the clouds and see the
lightnings play, and hear the majestic and awful voice of God's
thunder, which oftentimes was exceedingly entertaining, leading
me to sweet contemplations of my great and glorious God. While
thus engaged, it always seemed natural to me to sing, or chant
forth my meditations ; or, to speak my thoughts in soliloquies with
a singing voice. . . .

The heaven I desired was a heaven of holiness ; to be with God,
and to spend my eternity in divine love, and holy communion with
Christ. My mind was very much taken up with contemplations
on heaven, and the enjoyments there ; and living there in perfect
holiness, humility, and love ; and it used at that time to appear a
great part of the happiness of heaven, that there the saints could
express their love to Christ. It appeared to me a great clog and
burden, that what I felt within, I could not express as I desired.
The inward ardor of my soul seemed to be hindered and pent up,
and could not freely flame out as it would. I used often to think,
how in heaven this principle should freely and fully vent and ex-
press itself. Heaven appeared exceedingly delightful, as a world

1 8 AMERICAN PROSE

of love ; and that all happiness consisted in living in pure, humble,
heavenly, divine love.

I remember the thoughts I used then to have of holiness ; and
said sometimes to myself, " I do certainly know that I love holi-
ness, such as the gospel prescribes." It appeared to me that there
was nothing in it but what was ravishingly lovely; the highest
beauty and amiableness — a divine beauty ; far purer than any
thing here on earth ; and that everything else was like mire and
defilement, in comparison of it.

Holiness, as I then wrote down some of my contemplations on
it, appeared to me to be of a sweet, pleasant, charming, serene,
calm nature ; which brought an inexpressible purity, brightness,
peacefulness, and ravishment to the soul. In other words, that it
made the soul like a field or garden of God, with all manner of
pleasant flowers ; all pleasant, delightful, and undisturbed ; enjoy-
ing a sweet calm, and the gentle vivifying beams of the sun. The
soul of a true Christian, as I then wrote my meditations, appeared
like such a little white flower as we see in the spring of the year;
low and humble on the ground, opening its bosom to receive the
pleasant beams of the sun's glory ; rejoicing as it were in a calm
rapture ; diffusing around a sweet fragrancy ; standing peacefully
and lovingly, in the midst of other flowers round about ; all in like
manner opening their bosoms, to drink in the light of the sun.
There was no part of creature holiness, that I had so great a sense
of its loveliness, as humility, brokenness of heart, and poverty of
spirit ; and there was nothing that I so earnestly longed for. My
heart panted after this, to lie low before God, as in the dust ; that
I might be nothing, and that God might be all, that I might
become as a little child.

[From certain private papers written about 1723. Works^ edition of 1857,
vol. i, pp. 16-18.]

SARAH PIERREPONT

They say there is a young lady in [New Haven] who is beloved
of that great Being who made and rules the world, and that there
are certain seasons in which this great Being, in some way or other
invisible, comes to her and fills her mind with exceeding sweet

JONATHAN EDWARDS 1 9

delight, and that she hardly cares for anything except to meditate
on Him ; that she expects after a while to be received up where
He is, to be raised up out of the world and caught up into heaven ;
being assured that He loves her too well to let her remain at a
distance from Him always. There she is to dwell with Him, and
to be ravished with His love and delight forever. Therefore, if
you present all the world before her, with the richest of its treas-
ures, she disregards and cares not for it, and is unmindful of any
pain or affliction. She has a strange sweetness in her mind, and
singular purity in her affections ; is most just and conscientious in
all her conduct ; and you could not persuade her to do anything
wrong or sinful, if you would give her all the world, lest she should
offend this great Being. She is of a wonderful calmness, and
universal benevolence of mind ; especially after this great God has
manifested Himself to her mind. She will sometimes go about
from place to place singing sweetly ; and seems to be always full
of joy and pleasure, and no one knows for what. She loves to be
alone, walking in the fields and groves, and seems to have some
one invisible always conversing with her.

[From a private paper, written about 1 723, and published in D wight's Life,'\

SIN'S ENTRANCE INTO THE WORLD

The things, which have already been offered, may serve to
obviate or clear many of the objections which might be raised
concerning sin's first coming into the world ; as though it would
follow from the doctrine maintained, that God must be the author
of the first sin, through his so disposing things, that it should
necessarily follow from his permission, that the sinful act should
be committed, etc. I need not, therefore, stand to repeat what
has been said already, about such a necessity's not proving God to
be the author of sin, in any ill sense, or in any such sense as
to infringe any liberty of man, concerned in his moral agency,
or capacity of blame, guilt, and punishment.

But, if it should nevertheless be said, supposing the case so, that
God, when he had made man, might so order his circumstances,
that from these circumstances, together with his withholding further

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assistance and divine influence, his sin would infallibly follow, why
might not God as well have first made man with a fixed prevailing
principle of sin in his heart? I answer,

I. It was meet, if sin did come into existence, and appear in
the world, it should arise from the imperfection which properly
belongs to a creature, as such, and should appear so to do, that it
might appear not to be from God as the efficient or fountain.
But this could not have been, if man had been made at first with
sin in his heart ; nor unless the abiding principle and habit of sin
were first introduced by an evil act of the creature. If sin had
not arisen from the imperfection of the creature, it would not have
been so visible, that it did not arise from God, as the positive
cause, and real source of it. — But it would require room that can-
not here be allowed, fully to consider all the difficulties which
have been started, concerning the first entrance of sin into the
world. And therefore,

II. I would observe, that objections against the doctrine that
has been laid down, in opposition to the Arminian notion of
liberty, from these difficulties, are altogether impertinent ; because
no additional difficulty is incurred, by adhering to a scheme in
this manner differing from theirs, and none would be removed or
avoided, by agreeing with, and maintaining theirs. Nothing that
the Arminians say, about the contingence, or self-determining
power of man's will, can serve to explain, with less difficulty, how
the first sinful volition of mankind could take place, and man be
justly charged with the blame of it. To say, the Will was self-
determined, or determined by free choice, in that sinful volition ;
which is to say, that the first sinful volition was determined by a
foregoing sinful volition ; is no solution of the difficulty. It is an
odd way of solving difficulties, to advance greater, in order to it.
To say, two and two make nine ; or, that a child begat his father,
solves no difficulty ; no more does it, to say, the first sinfiil act of
choice was before the first sinful act of choice, and chose and deter-
mined it, and brought it to pass. Nor is it any better solution, to
say, the first sinful volition chose, determined and produced itself;
which is to say, it was before it was. Nor will it go any further
towards helping us over the difficulty to say, the first sinful volition
arose accidentally, without any cause at all ; any more than it will

JONATHAN EDWARDS 21

solve the difficult question, How the world could be made out of
nothing? to say, it came into being out of nothing, without any
cause ; as has been already observed. And if we should allow
that that could be, that the first evil evolution should arise by
perfect accident, without any cause ; it would relieve no difficulty,
about God*s laying the blame of it to man. For how was man to
blame for perfect accident, which had no cause, and which there-
fore, he (to be sure) was not the cause of, any more than if it came
by some external cause ? — Such solutions are no better, than if
some person, going about to solve some of the strange mathemat-
ical paradoxes, about infinitely great and small quantities ; as, that
some infinitely great quantities are infinitely greater than some
other infinitely great quantities ; and also that some infinitely
small quantities, are infinitely less than others, which are yet infi-
nitely little ; in order to a solution, should say, that mankind have
been under a mistake, in supposing a greater quantity to exceed a
smaller ; and that a hundred, multiplied by ten, makes but a single
unit.

[A Careful and Strict Inquiry into the Modern Prevailing Notions of that
Freedom of the Will^ which is supposed to be Essential to Moral Agency^ Virtue
and Vice^ Reward and Punishment^ Praise and Blame ; part iv, section lO.

1754.]

NATURAL MEN ARE GOD'S ENEMIES

I. I am to show, in what respects they are enemies to God.

I. Their enmity appears in their judgments; in the judgment
and esteem they have of God. They have a very mean esteem
of God. Men are ready to entertain a good esteem of those with
whom they are friends : they are apt to think highly of their
qualities, to give them their due praises ; and if there be defects,
to cover them. But those to whom they are enemies, they are
disposed to have mean thoughts of; they are apt to entertain
a dishonorable opinion of them ; they will be ready to look con-
temptibly upon anything that is praiseworthy in them.

So it is with natural men towards God. They entertain very
low and contemptible thoughts of God. Whatever honor and
respect they may pretend and make a show of towards God, if

22 AMERICAN PROSE

their practice be examined, it will show, that they do certainly
look upon him to be a Being, that is but little to be regarded.
They think him one that is worthy of very little honor and respect,
not worthy to be much taken notice of.

The language of their heart is, " Who is the Lord, that I should
obey his voice ? " Exod, v. 2. " What is the Almighty, that we
should serve him ? and what profit should we have if we pray unto
him?" Job xxi. 15. They count him worthy neither to be
loved nor feared. They dare not behave with that slight and dis-
regard towards one of their fellow creatures, when a little raised
above them in power and authority, as they dare and do towards
God. They value one of their equals much more than God,
and are ten times more afraid of offending such a one, than of
displeasing the God that made them. They cast such exceeding
contempt on God, as to prefer every vile lust before him. And
every worldly enjoyment is set higher in their esteem than God.
A morsel of meat, or a few pence of worldly gain, is preferred
before him. God is set last and lowest in the esteem of natural
men. . . .

3. Their wills are contrary to his will. God*s will and theirs
are exceeding cross the one to the other. God wills those things
that they hate, and are most averse to ; and they will those things
that God hates. Hence they oppose God in their wills : they set
up their wills against the will of God. There is a dreadful, violent,
and obstinate opposition of the will of natural men to the will of
God.

They are very opposite to the commands of God. It is from
the enmity of the will, that " the carnal mind is not subject to the
law of God, neither indeed can be," Rom. vii. 7. Hence natural
men are enemies to God's government. They are not loyal sub-
jects, but enemies to God, considered as Lord of the world.
They are entire enemies to God*s authority.

4. They are enemies to God in their affections. There is in
every natural man a seed of malice against God : yea, there is
such a seed of this rooted in the heart of man naturally. And it
does often dreadfully break forth and appear. Though it may in
a great measure lie hid in secure times, when God lets men alone,
and they meet with no great disturbance of body or mind ; yet if

JONATHAN EDWARDS 23

God but does touch men a little in their consciences, by manifest-
ing to them a little of his wrath for their sins, this oftentimes
brings out the principle of malice against God, which is exercised
in dreadful heart-risings, inward wranglings and quarrelings, and
blasphemous thoughts ; wherein the heart is like a viper, hissing,
and spitting poison at God. There is abundance of such a prin-
ciple in the heart. And however free from it the heart may seem
to be when let alone and secure, yet a very little thing will set it in
a rage. Temptation will show what is in the heart. The alteration
of a man's circumstances will often discover the heart : a change
of circumstance will bring that out which was hid before. Pharaoh
had no more natural enmity against God than other men ; and
if other natural men had been in Pharaoh's circumstances, the
same corruptions would have put forth themselves in as dreadful a
manner. The Scribes and Pharisees had naturally no more of a
principle of malice in their hearts against Christ than other men ;
and other natural men would, in their case, and having as little
restraint, exercise as much malice against Christ as they did.
When wicked men come to be cast into hell, then their malice
against God will appear. Then it will appear what dreadful
malice they have in their hearts. Then their hearts will appear
as full of malice as hell is full of fire. But when wicked men come
to be in hell, there will be no new corruptions put into their
hearts ; but only old ones will break forth without restraint. That
is all the difference between a wicked man on earth and a wicked
man in hell, that in hell there will be more to stir up the exercise
of corruption, and less to restrain it than on earth ; but there will
be no new corruption put in. A wicked man will have no
principle of corruption in hell, but what he carried to hell with
him. There are now the seeds of all the malice that will be
exercised then. The malice of damned spirits is but a branch of
the root, that is in the hearts of natural men now. A natural man
has a heart like the heart of a devil ; but only as corruption is
more under restraint in man than in devils.

5. They are enemies in their practice. "They walk contrary
to him," Lev, xxvi. 21. Their enmity against God does not lie
still, but they are exceeding active in it. They are engaged in a
war against God. Indeed they cannot hurt God, he is so much

24 AMERICAN PROSE

above them ; but yet they do what they can. They oppose them-
selves to his honor and glory : they oppose themselves to the
interest of his kingdom in the world : they oppose themselves to
the will and command of God ; and oppose him in his govern-
ment. They oppose God in his works, and in his declared
designs ; while God is doing one work, they are doing the con-
trary, and as much as in them lies, counter-working; God seeks
one thing, and they seek directly the contrary. They list under
Satan's banner, and are his willing soldiers in his opposing the
kingdom of God.

[From sermon three ; Men Naturally God^s Enemies. Works, vol. iv, pp.
37-40.]

THE LEGACY OF CHRIST

This legacy of Christ to his true disciples is very diverse from all
that the men of this world ever leave to their children when they
die. The men of this world, many of them, when they come to
die, have great estates to bequeath to their children, an abundance
of the good things of this world, large tracts of ground, perhaps in
a fruitful soil, covered with flocks and herds. They sometimes
leave to their children stately mansions, and vast treasures of sil-
ver, gold, jewels, and precious things, fetched from both the
Indies, and from every side of the globe of the earth. They leave
them wherewith to live in much state and magnificence, and make
a great show among men, to fare very sumptuously \ and swim in
worldly pleasures. Some have crowns, sceptres, and palaces, and
great monarchies to leave to their heirs. But none of these things
are to be compared to that blessed peace of Christ which he has
bequeathed to his true followers. These things are such as God
commonly, in his providence, gives his worst enemies, those whom
he hates and despises most. But Christ's peace is a precious
benefit, which he reserves for his peculiar favorites. These
worldly things, even the best of them, that the men and princes of
the world leave for their children, are things which God in his
providence throws out to those whom he looks on as dogs ; but
Christ's peace is the bread of his children. All these earthly
things are but empty shadows, which, however men set their

JONATHAN EDWARDS 2$

hearts upon them, are not bread, and can never satisfy their souls ;
but this peace of Christ is a truly substantial, satisfying food, /sat\
Iv. 2. None of those things if men have them to the best advan-
tage, and in ever so great abundance, can give, true peace and
rest to the soul, as is abundantly manifest not only in reason, but
experience; it being found in all ages, that those who have the
most of them, have commonly the least quietness of mind. It is
true, there may be a kind of quietness, a false peace they may
have in their enjoyment of worldly things ; men may bless their
souls, and think themselves the only happy persons, and despise
others; may say to their souls, as the rich man did, Zukg xii. 19,
" Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years, take thine
ease, eat, drink, and be merry." But Christ's peace, which he
gives to his true disciples, vastly differs from this peace that men
may have in the enjoyments of the world, in the following
respects :

I. Christ's peace is a reasonable peace and rest of soul ; it is
what has its foundation in light and knowledge, in the proper exer-
cises of reason, and a right view of things ; whereas the peace of
the world is founded in blindness and delusion. The peace that the
people of Christ have, arises from their having their eyes open, and
seeing things as they be. The more they consider, and the more
they know of the truth and reality of things, the more they know
what is true concerning themselves, the state and condition they
are in ; the more they know of God, and the more certain they are
that there is a God, and the more they know what manner of being
he is, the more certain they are of another world and future judg-
ment, and of the truth of God's threatenings and promises ; the
more their consciences are awakened and enlightened, and the
brighter and the more searching the light is that they see things in,
the more is their peace established : whereas, on the contrary, the
peace that the men of the world have in their worldly enjoyments
can subsist no otherwise than by their being kept in ignorance.
They must be blindfolded and deceived, otherwise they can have
no peace : do but let light in upon their consciences, so that they
may look about them and see what they are, and what circumstan-
ces they are in, and it will at once destroy all their quietness and
comfort. Their peace can live nowhere but in the dark. Light

26 AMERICAN PROSE

turns their ease into torment. The more they know what is true
concerning God and concerning themselves, the more they are
sensible of the truth concerning those enjoyments which they pos-
sess ; and the more they are sensible what things now are, and
what things are like to be hereafter, the more will their calm be
turned into a storm. The worldly man's peace cannot be main-
tained but by avoiding consideration and reflection. If he allows
himself to think, and properly to exercise his reason, it destroys
his quietness and comfort. If he would establish his carnal peace,
it concerns him to put out the light of his mind, and turn beast as
fast as he can. The faculty of reason, if at liberty, proves a mortal
enemy to his peace. It concerns him, if he would keep alive his
peace, to contrive all ways that may be, to stupify his mind and
deceive himself, and to imagine things to be otherwise than they
be. But with respect to the peace which Christ gives, reason is its
great friend. The more this faculty is exercised, the more it is
established. The more they consider and view things with truth
and exactness, the firmer is their comfort, and the higher their joy.
How vast a difference is there between the peace of a Christian
and the worldling ! How miserable are they who cannot enjoy
peace any otherwise than by hiding their eyes from the light, and
confining themselves to darkness ; whose peace is properly stu-
pidity ; as the ease that a man has who has taken a dose of stupify-
ing poison, and the ease and pleasure that a drunkard may have
in a house on fire over his head, or the joy of a distracted man in
thinking that he is a king, though a miserable wretch confined in
bedlam : whereas, the peace which Christ gives his true disciples,
is the light of life, something of the tranquillity of heaven, the peace
of the celestial paradise, that has the glory of God to lighten it.

[From sermon twenty-six : The Peace which Christ Gives his True Followers*
Works, vol. iv, pp. 434-435-]

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

[Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston, of humble parents, on Jan. 17, 1706.
He was early apprenticed to his brother, a printer, but developing tastes both
for study and for personal independence, ran away at the age of seventeen.
He reached Philadelphia friendless and penniless, but soon began to rise, was
sent on business to London, where he practised his trade and broadened his
experience, returned to Philadelphia after about eighteen months, printed and
published newspapers and almanacs there, and through his frugal and indus-
trious habits soon acquired both means and position. His public spirit dis-
played in connection with the establishment of libraries and other municipal
institutions, his scientific studies, which culminated in his electrical discoveries,
his career as Postmaster-general and subsequently Sls agent for Pennsylvania
and other colonies at London, made him easily the most prominent American
of his age both at home and abroad. During the troubles preceding the
Revolution he was a consistent patriot, and after war was declared he repre-
sented the new nation most admirably as ambassador to France, where he was
universally admired and where his fame is still fresh. In 1785 he returned
wearied out to the United States, but he still had strength to serve his adopted
state as President and to take an important part in the Convention of 1787
that framed the Constitution. He died second in honor only to Washington,
on April 17, 1790. The best edition of his works is that in ten volumes,
edited by John Bigelow. The best biography of Franklin is that by John T.
Morse, Jr.

Franklin is by common consent the greatest of our colonial
writers, but he is more than this, for he is one of the greatest of all
American authors, and has produced at least one book (his Au^o-
biography) which the world has agreed to regard as a classic.
He shares with Cooper, Poe, Mrs. Stowe, and perhaps Emerson
and one or two others, the honor of having been fully appreciated
abroad, nor has one of these writers received more universal recog-
nition at home, which is a matter of greater or at least equal im-
portance. Yet he was not primarily a man of letters, and is thought
of as statesman and philosopher oftener than as author. On the
other hand, his political wisdom, his rare common sense, his engag-

28 AMERICAN PROSE

ing humor, his scientific speculations and discoveries, are not the
real basis of his fame as a writer, however much they may indirectly
contribute to it. It is not so much what Franklin deliberately did
or thought that makes him a great author, as what he indirectly did
the moment he took up a pen. He gave us himself, not merely his
actions and thoughts, and mankind has always been peculiarly grate-
ful for such self-revelations. The saying of Buffon, so often quoted,
that style is the man, has never received a better exemplification of
its truth than in the writings of Franklin, which are almost literally
and truly Franklin himself. He has done more than give us a mere
autobiography. Benvenuto Cellini did that, and is nevertheless
thought of chiefly as an artist. Franklin has left us voluminous
works, which, whether in their respective parts they deal with
science or politics or every-day matters, and whether or not we
read them thoroughly and systematically, are nevertheless as com-
plete and perfect an exposition of an interesting character as can
be paralleled in literature. Hence it is that while Franklin is still
for most people a sage, just as Cellini is an artist, he is for some
who have learned to know him through his self-delineating works
even more the great writer than he is the great philosopher or the
great statesman and public servant.

It is obvious that if all this be true, the secret of Franklin's
power as a writer must in the main lie elsewhere than in the mate-
rials of which his volumes are composed. There is more political
philosophy to be found in the writings of some of Franklin's com-
patriots than can be found in his ; other men have written better
letters, other men have composed greater scientific monographs,
and yet in many of these cases the world has not for an instant
thought it could discover a great writer. Nor can the secret of
his power lie merely in his style — technically speaking. Good as
Franklin's style is, it would be possible to parallel it in authors
whom nobody has thought of calling really great. Perhaps we
shall come as near explaining the secret by saying that Franklin's
power comes from the fact that he revealed a fascinating and at
the same time great character by means of a pellucid and even
style, as we shall by any other explanation we can offer. Franklin
would have been great and fascinating if a Boswell had portrayed
him for us ; in becoming his own Boswell he has enrolled himself

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 29

forever among the classical writers, not merely of America, but of
the world.

Descending now from generals to particulars, we may notice
that while it is true to say that Addison and other contemporary
British authors did much to form Franklin's style, and that in
many of the forms of composition he undertook, such as his dia-
logues, he was unquestionably imitative, it is equally true to affirm
that he was rather the product, nay, the epitome, of his century,
than a provincial Briton, and that in many most important respects
he was as true an American as Abraham Lincoln himself. Frank-
lin's shrewdness, common sense, and wit are much more American
than they are British in flavor, and his evenly balanced indepen-
dence, fearlessness, and dignity are racy of his native soil. His
lack of the highest spirituality, on the other hand, together with
his somewhat amusing optimism, his wide-reaching, practical phil-
anthropy, and the general sanity of his character, belong more to
his century than to his race or country. But in every thought and
word and deed of his life he was never anything but a loyal citizen
of the land from which he was so long exiled by necessity, and it
is the merest hypercriticism that would contend that both he and
Washington were anything else than Americans in their warp and
woof.

The chief qualities of Franklin's work as a writer have all been
given by implication in the preceding paragraph. Of his humor, it
must suffice to say that it holds a middle range between the subtlety
of Lamb's and the obviousness of Artemus Ward's. Of his lack not
merely of spirituality, but even the conception of what is meant by
the term, the attempt to amend the Lord's Prayer is a sufficiently
familiar example. His scheme for reaching moral perfection throws
a ludicrous light upon his this-worldly optimism, while his general
sanity of character is witnessed to by hundreds of letters and by
page after page of his only too short Autobiography. Perhaps his
shrewdness, his common sense, and his wit stand out singly and in
unison as well in his preface to Poor Richard's Almanac as any-
where else, but they are obviously such basal qualities in Frank-
lin's character that they are never absent from his self-depictmg
writings of whatever form and type. The same may be said with
regard to his evenly balanced independence, fearlessness, and dig-

30 AMERICAN PROSE

nity, but few students of his life and works will fail to associate
these qualities more particularly with that " most consummate
masterpiece of poUtical and editorial craftsmanship," to quote
Professor M. C.Tyler, The Examination of Dr. Benjamin Frank-
lin, in the British House of Commons, Relative to the Repeal of
the American Stamp Act, in iy66.

In conclusion, we may notice, with regard to verbal style, that a
straightforward clearness is Franklin's most characteristic quality.
He writes as we may imagine that he talked when at his best, and
for the subjects he treated there could have been no more ideal
style. Here and there a word or phrase may betray the fact that
he wrote over a century ago, but in the main, it is distinctly true to
say that his style " reads itself* as easily as that of any master of
English. We may readily grant that Addison helped to form
Franklin's style, if we will add immediately that, in all probability,
he would have come near finding it for himself had he never chanced
when a boy to fall under the fascinating influence of the Spectator.
Short sentences, vigorous phrases, timely words, — these Franklin
could not have helped using, simply because he was " Rare Ben
Franklin." He probably could not foresee that the time would so
soon come when the very qualities of style that were natural to him
would seem to posterity the best qualities to be cultivated ; but if
he had had all the Latin scholarship of Dr. Johnson and all the
leisure and propensity to formal composition that an academic life
affords, lie would surely not have fallen into that labored pomposity
and that dead flatness which vitiate so much eighteenth century
prose. He wrote like the rounded, vigorous, sane man that he
was, and as a result he lives for us as few do of our fellow- mortals
who, in the words of Horace, are but as " dust and a shade."

W. P. Trent

BENJAMIN FRANK UN 3 1

FRANKLIN'S ENTRANCE INTO PHILADELPHIA

I HAVE been the more particular in this description of my jour-
ney, and shall be so of my first entry into that city, that you may
in your mind compare such unlikely beginnings with the figure I
have since made there. I was in my working dress, my best
clothes being to come round by sea. I was dirty fix)m my jour-
ney ; my pockets were stuff 'd out with shirts and stockings, and I
knew no soul nor where to look for lodging. I was fatigued with
travelling, rowing, and want of rest, I was very hungry ; and my
whole stock of cash consisted of a Dutch dollar, and about a shil-
ling in copper. The latter I gave the people of the boat for my
passage, who at first refused it on account of my rowing ; but I
insisted on their taking it. A man being sometimes more gener-
ous when he has but a little money than when he has plenty, per-
haps thro' fear of being thought to have but little.

Then I walked up the street, gazing about till near the market-
house I met a boy with bread. I had made many a meal on bread,
and, inquiring where he got it, I went immediately to the baker's
he directed me to, in Second-street, and ask'd for bisket, intending
such as we had in Boston ; but they, it seems, were not made in
Philadelphia. Then I asked for a three-penny loaf, and was told
they had none such. So not considering or knowing the differ-
ence of money, and the greater cheapness nor the names of his
bread, I bade him give me three- penny worth of any sort.
He gave me, accordingly, three great puffy rolls. I was sur-
pris'd at the quantity, but took it, and having no room in my
pockets, walk'd off with a roll under each arm, and eating the
other. Thus I went up Market-street as far as Fourth- street,
passing by the door of Mr. Read, my future wife's father ; when
she, standing at the door, saw me, and thought I made, as I
certainly did, a most awkward, ridiculous appearance. Then I
turned and went down Chestnut-street and part of Walnut-street,
eating my roll all the way, and, coming round, found my. elf
again at Market-street wharf, near the boat I came in, to which I
went for a draught of the river water ; and being filled with one
of my rolls, gave the other two to a woman and her child that

32 AMERICAN PROSE

came down the river in the boat with us, and were waiting to gc
farther.

Thus refreshed, I walked again up the street, which by this time
had many clean-dressed people in it, who were all walking the
same way. I joined them, and thereby was led into the great
meeting-house of the Quakers near the market. I sat down among
them, and after looking round a while and hearing nothing said,
being very drowsy thro* labor and want of rest the preceding
night, I fell fast asleep, and continued so till the meeting broke
up, when one was kind enough to rouse me. This was, therefore,
the first house I was in, or slept in, in Philadelphia.

[^Autobiography , published in London in 1817. The correct text was first
established by John Bigelow, who obtained possession of the original manu-
script, and published by J. B. Lippincott and Co., Philadelphia, in 1868. It is
also included in BigeIow*s Life of Benjamin Franklin^ written by Himself
1874, from which this selection and the following are reprinted, by permission
of the publishers, J. B. Lippincott & Co. Vol. i, pp. 125-127.]

A SCHEME FOR PERFECTION

It was about this time I conceived the bold and arduous pror
ject of arriving at moral perfection. I wished to live without com-
mitting any fault at any time; I would conquer all that either
natural inclination, custom, or company might lead me into. As 1
knew, or thought I knew, what was right and wrong, I did not see
why I might not always do the one and avoid the other. But I
soon fouitd I had undertaken a task of more difficulty than I had
imagined. While my care was employ'd in guarding against one
fault, I was often surprised by another ; habit took the advantage
of inattention ; inclination was sometimes too strong for reason.
I concluded, at length, that the mere speculative conviction that
it was our interest to be completely virtuous, was not sufficient to
prevent our slipping ; and that the contrary habits must be broken^
and good ones . acquired and established, before we can have any
dependence on a steady, uniform rectitude of conduct. For this
purpose I therefore contrived the following method.

In the various enumerations of the moral virtues I had met with
in my reading, I found the catalogue more or less numerous, as

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 33

different writers included more or fewer ideas under the same
name. Temperance, for example, was by some confined to eating
and drinking, while by others it was extended to mean the mod-
erating every other pleasure, appetite, inclination, or passion,
bodily or mental, even to our avarice and ambition. I proposed
to myself, for the sake of clearness, to use rather more names, with
fewer ideas annex'd to each, than a few names with more ideas ;
and I included under thirteen names of virtues all that at that time
occurr'd to me as necessary or desirable, and annexed to each a
short precept, which fully express'd the extent I gave to its meaning.
These names of virtues, with their precepts were :

I. Temperance
Eat not to dullness ; drink not to elevation.

2. Silence

Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifiing
conversation.

3. Order

Let all your things have their places ; let each part of your busi-
ness have its time.

4. Resolution

Resolve to perform what you ought ; perform without fail what
you resolve.

5. Frugaltty

Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i,e,
waste nothing.

6. Industry

Lose no time ; be always employ 'd in something useful ; cut off
all unnecessary actions.

7. Sincerity

Use no hurtful deceit ; think innocently and justly ; and, if you
speak, speak accordingly.

8. Justice

Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are
your duty.

34 AMERICAN PROSE

9. Moderation

Avoid extreams ; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think
they deserve.

10. f LEANLINESS

Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloaths, or habitation.

II. Tranquillity

Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or imavoid-

able.

12. Chastity

13. Humiuty
Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

My intention being to acquire the habitude of all these virtues,
I judg'd it would be well not to distract my attention by attempt-
ing the whole at once, but to fix it on one of them at a time ; and,
when I should be master of that, then to proceed to another, and
so on, till I should have gone thro* the thirteen ; and, as the pre-
vious acquisition of some might facilitate the acquisition of certain
others, I arrang'd them with that view, as they stand above.
Temperance first, as it tends to procure that coolness and clear-
ness of head, which is so necessary where constant vigilance was to
be kept up, and guard maintained against the unremitting attrac-
tion of ancient habits, and the force of perpetual temptations.
This being acquir'd and establish'd. Silence would be more easy ;
and my desire being to gain knowledge at the same time that I
improv'd in virtue, and considering that in conversation it was
obtain'd rather by the use of the ears than of the tongue, and
therefore wishing to break a habit I was getting into of prattHng,
punning, and joking, which only made me acceptable to trifling
company, I gave Silence the second place. This and the next.
Order y I expected would allow me more time for attending to my
project and my studies. Resolution, once become habitual, would
keep me firm in my endeavors to obtain all the subsequent virtues ;
Frugality and Industry freeing me from my remaining debt, and
producing affluence and independence, would make more easy the

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

practice of Sincerity and Justice, etc., etc. Conceiving then, that,
agreeably to the advice of Pythagoras in his Golden Verses, daily
examination would be necessary, I contrived the following method
for conducting that examination.

I made a little book, in which I allotted a page for each of the
virtues. I ruPd each page with red ink, so as to have seven col-
umes, one for each day of the week, marking each column with a
letter for the day. I cross'd these columns with thirteen red lines,
marking the beginning of each line with the first letter of one of
the virtues, on which line, and in its proper column, I might mark,
by a little black spot, every fault I found upon examination to
have been committed respecting that virtue upon that day.

FORM OF THE PAGES

TKMP£RANCE

EAT NOT TO DULNESS;
DRINK NOT TO ELEVATION.

« «

36 AMERICAN PROSE

I determined to give a week's strict attention to each of the
virtues successively. Thus, in the first week, my great guard was
tQ avoid every the least offence against Temperance, leaving the
other virtues to their ordinary chance, only marking every evening
the faults of the day. Thus, if in the first week I could keep my
first Une, marked T, clear of spots, I supposed the habit of that
virtue so much strengthen'd, and its opposite weaken'd, that I
might venture extending my attention to include the next, and for
the following week keep both lines clear of spots. Proceeding
thus to the last, I could go thro' a course compleat in thirteen
weeks, and four courses in a year. And like him who, having a
garden to weed, does not attempt to eradicate all the bad herbs
at once, which would exceed his reach and his strength, but works
on one of the beds at a time, and, having accomplish'd the first,
proceeds to a second, so I should have, I hoped, the encouraging
pleasure of seeing on my pages the progress I made in virtue, by
clearing successively my lines of their spots, till in the end, by a
number of courses, I should be happy in viewing a clean book,
after a thirteen weeks' daily examination.

This my little book had for its motto these lines firom Addison's

Cato :

" Here will I hold. If there's a power above us
(And that there is, all nature cries aloud
Through all her works), He must delight in virtue;
And that which he delights in must be happy."

Another from Cicero,

O vitae Philosophia dux! O virtutum indagatrix expultrixque vitiorum!
Unus dies, bene et ex prseceptis tuis actus, peccanti immortalitati est ante-
ponendus."

[Autobiography, From Bigelow's Liftf vol. i, pp. 227-245.]

THE WAY TO WEALTH

Courteous Reader : I have heard that nothing gives an author
so great pleasure as to find his works respectfully quoted by others.
Judge, then, how much I must have been gratified by an incident
I am going to relate to you. I stopped my horse lately where a

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 37

great number of people were collected at an auction of merchants*
goods. The hour of the sale not being come, they were convers-
ing on the badness of the times ; and one of the company called
to a plain, clean, old man, with white locks : " Pray, Father Abra-
ham, what think you of the times? Will not these heavy taxes
quite ruin the country ? How shall we ever be able to pay them ?
What would you advise us to do ? " Father Abraham stood up
and replied : " If you have my advice, I will give it to you in
short ; for A word to the wise is enough, as Poor Richard says."
They joined in desiring him to speak his mind, and, gathering
round him, he proceeded as follows :

" Friends," said he, " the taxes are indeed very heavy, and if
those laid on by the government were the only ones we had to
pay, we might more easily discharge them, but we have many
others and much more grievous to some of us. We are taxed
twice as much by our idleness, three times as much by our pride,
and four times as much by our folly, and from these taxes the
commissioners cannot ease or deliver us by allowing an abatement.
However, let us hearken to good advice and something may be
done for us ; God helps them that help themselves , as Poor Richard
says.

" I. It would be thought a hard government that should tax its
people one-tenth part of their time, to be employed in its service,
but idleness taxes many of us much more ; sloth by bringing on dis-
eases, absolutely shortens life. Sloth, like rust, consumes faster than
labor wears, while the used key is always bright, as Poor Richard
says. But dost thou love life, then do not squander time, for that is
the stuff life is made of, as Poor Richard says. How much more
than is necessary do we spend in sleep, forgetting that The sleeping
fox catches no poultry, and that There will be sleeping enough in the
grave, as Poor Richard says.

" If time be of all things the most precious, wasting time must
be, as Poor Richard says, the greatest prodigality, since, as he else-
where tells us, Lost time is never found again, and what we call
time enough always proves little enough. Let us then up and be
doing, and doing to the purpose ; so by diligence shall we do more
with less perplexity. Sloth makes all things difficult, but industry
all things easy; and He that riseth late must trot all day, and shall

38 AMERICAN PROSE

scarce overtake his business at night; while Laziness travels S6
slowly that Poverty soon overtakes him. Drive thy business y lei
not that drive thee ; and Early to bed and early to rise, makes a
man healthy , wealthy, and wise, as Poor Richard says.

" So what signifies wishing and hoping for better times ? We
may make these times better if we bestir ourselves. Industry need
not wish, and he that lives upon hopes will die fasting. There are
no gains without pains ; then help, hands, for I have no lands ;
or if I have they are smartly taxed. He that hath a trade hath an
estate, and he that hath a calling hath an office of profit and honor,
as poor Richard says ; but then the trade must be worked at and
the calling followed, or neither the estate nor the office will enable
us to pay our taxes. If we are industrious we shall never starve,
for At the working man's house hunger looks in but dares not enter.
Nor will the bailiff nor the constable enter, for Industry pays debts,
while despair increaseth them. What though you have found no
treasure, nor has any rich relation left you a legacy. Diligence is
the mother of good luck, and God gives all things to industry. Then
plough deep while sluggards sleep, and you shall have corn to sell
and to keep. Work while it is called to-day, for you know not
how much you may be hindered to-morrow. One to-day is worth
tivo to-morrows, as Poor Richard says ; and further. Never leave
that till to-morrow which you can do to-day. If you were a ser-
vant would you not be ashamed that a good master should catch
you idle? Are you then your own master? Be ashamed to catch
yourself idle when there is so much to be done for yourself, your
family, your country, and your king. Handle your tools without
mittens ; remember that The catkin gloves catches no mice, as Poor
Richard says. It is true there is much to be done, and perhaps
you are weakhanded, but stick to it steadily and you will see great
effects ; for Constant dropping wears away stones ; and By dili-
gence and patience the mouse ate in two the cable ; and Little
strokes fell great oaks.

" Methinks I hear some of you say, * Must a man afford himself
no leisure?* I will tell thee, my friend, what Poor Richard says:
Employ thy time well, if thou meanest to gain leisure ; and, since
thou art not sure of a minute, throw not away an hour. Leisure
is time for doing something useful ; this leisure the diligent man

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 39

will obtain, but the lazy man never ; for A life of leisure and a life
of laziness are tuto things. Many^ ivithout labor^ would live by
their wits only, but they break for 7vant of stock ; whereas industry
gives comfort and plenty and respect. Fly pleasures, and they will
follow you. The diligent spinner has a large shift; and now I have
a sheep and a cow, everybody bids me good morrow,

"II. But with our industry we must likewise be steady, settled,
and careful, and oversee our own affairs with our own eyes, and
not trust too much to others ; for, as Poor Richard says :

/ never saw an oft-removed tree

Nor yet an oft-removed family^

That throve so well as those that settled be.

. ** And again. Three removes are as bad as a fire ; and again. Keep
thy shop, and thy shop will keep thee ; and again : If you would
your business done, go ; if not, send. And again :

He that by the plough would thrive^
Himself must either hold or drive.

And again, The eye of a master will do more work than both his
hands ; and again, Want of care does us more damage than want
of knowledge ; and again. Not to oversee workmen is to leave them
your purse open. Trusting too much to others* care is the ruin of
many ; for, In the ajfairs of this world men are saved, not by faith,
but by the want of it; but a man's own care is profitable ; for, If
you would have a faithful semant, and one that you like, seme
yourself, A little neglect may breed great mischief; for want of a
nail the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost; and
for want of a horse the rider was lost, being overtaken and slain
by the enemy ; all for want of a little care about a horse-shoe nail.
" III. So much for industry, my friends, and attention to one's
own business ; but to these we must add frugality, if we would
make our industry more certainly successful. A man may, if he
knows not how to save as he gets, keep his nose all his life to the
grindstone, and die not worth a groat at last. A fat kitchen makes
a lean will; and

Many estates are spent in the getting^

Since women for tea forsook spinning and knitting.

And men for punch forsook hewing and splitting.

40 AMERICAN PROSE

If you would be wealthy^ think of saving as well as of getting, Tht
Indies have not made Spain rich^ because her ounces are greater
than her incomes,

" Away then with your expensive follies, and you will not then
have so much cause to complain of hard times, heavy taxes, and
chargeable families ; for

Women and wim, game and deceit.
Make ike wealtk small and Ike want great.

And further, What maintains one vice would bring up two children.
You may think perhaps that a little tea, or a little punch now and
then, diet a little more costly, clothes a little finer, and a little
entertainment now and then, can be no great matter ; but remem-
ber. Many a little makes a mickle. Beware of little expenses : A
small leak will sink a great ship, as Poor Richard says ; and again,
Who dainties love, shall beggars prove ; and moreover, Fools make
feasts and wise men eat them,

" Here you are all got together at this sale of fineries and knick-
knacks. You call them goods ; but if you do not take care they
will prove evils to some of you. You expect they will be sold
cheap, and perhaps they may for less than they cost ; but if you
have no occasion for them they must be dear to you. Remember
what Poor Richard says : Buy what thou hast no need of and ere
long thou shall sell thy necessaries. And again. At a great penny-
worth pause a while. He means, that perhaps the cheapness is
apparent only, and not real ; or the bargain, by straitening thee
in thy business, may do thee more harm than good. For in an-
other place he says. Many have been ruined by buying good penny-
worths. Again, // is foolish to lay out money in a purchase of
repentance; and yet this folly is practised every day at auctions
for want of minding the Almanac. Many a one, for the sake of
finery on the back, have gone with a hungry belly and half-starved
their families. Silks and satins, scarlet and velvets, put out the
kitchen fire, as Poor Richard says.

" These are not the necessaries of life ; they can scarcely be
called the conveniences ; and yet, only because they look pretty,
how many want to have them ! By these and other extravagances
the genteel are reduced to poverty and forced to borrow of those

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 4I

whom they formerly despised, but who, through industry and fru-
gality, have maintained their standing; in which case it appears
plainly that A ploughman on his legs is higher than a gentleman on
his kneesy as Poor Richard says. Perhaps they have had a small
estate left them, which they knew not the getting of: they think,
It is day, and will never be night; that a little to be spent out of
so much is not worth minding ; but Always taking out of the meal-
tub ^ and never putting in, soon comes to the bottom, as Poor Rich-
ard says ; and then, When the well is dry, they know the worth
of water. But this they might have known before, if they had
taken his advice. If you would know the value of money, go and
try to borrow some ; for he that goes a borrowing goes a sorrowing,
as Poor Richard says ; and indeed so does he that lends to such
people, when he goes to get it again. Poor Dick further advises
and says, —

• Fond pride of dress is sure a very curse ;

Ere fancy you consult, consult your purse.

And again, I^de is as loud a beggar as Want, and a great deal
more saucy. When you have bought one fine thing you must buy
ten more, that your appearance may be all of a piece ; but Poor
Dick says, // is easier to suppress the first desire than to satisfy all
that follow it. And it is as truly folly for the poor to ape the rich,
as for the frog to swell in order to equal the ox.

Vessels large may venture more,

Bui little boats should keep near shore.

It is, however, a folly soon punished ; for, as Poor Richard says.
Pride that dines on vanity sups on contempt. Pride breakfasted
Tvith Plenty, dined with Poverty, and supped with Infamy. And
after all, of what use is this pride of appearance, for which so much
is risked, so much is suffered ? It cannot promote health, nor ease
pain ; it makes no increase of merit in the person ; it creates
envy; it hastens misfortune.

" But what madness must it be to run in debt for these super-
fluities? We are offered by the terms of this sale six months*
credit ; and that, perhaps, has induced some of us to attend it,
because we cannot spare the ready money, and hope now to be
fine without it. But, ah ! think what you do when you run in

42 AMERICAN PROSE

debt \ you give to another power over your liberty. If you can
not pay at the time, you will be ashamed to see your creditor ;
you will be in fear when you speak to him; you will make poor,
pitiful, sneaking excuses, and by degrees come to lose your ve-
racity, and sink into base, downright lying ; for, The second vice is
lyingy the first is running into debt, as Poor Richard says ; and
again, to the same purpose. Lying rides upon Debt's back; whereas
a free-born Englishman ought not to be ashamed or afraid to see
or speak to any man living. But poverty often deprives a man
of all spirit and virtue. // is hard for an empty bag to stand up-
right.

" What would you think of that prince or of that government who
should issue an edict forbidding you to dress like a gentleman or
gentlewoman, on pain of imprisonment or servitude? Would you
not say that you are free, have a right to dress as you please, and
that such an edict would be a breach of your privileges,»and such
a government tyrannical ? And yet you are about to put yourself
under such tyranny when you run in debt for such dress ! Your
creditor has authority, at his pleasure, to deprive you of your lib-
erty by confining you in gaol till you shall be able to pay him.
When you have got your bargain you may perhaps think little
of payment ; but, as Poor Richard says, Creditors have better
memories than debtors ; creditors are a superstitious sect, great ob-
servers of set days and times. The day comes round before you
are aware, and the demand is made before you are prepared to
satisfy it ; or, if you bear your debt in mind, the term, which at
first seemed so long, will, as it lessens, appear extremely short.
Time will seem to have added wings to his heels as well as his
shoulders. Those have a short Lent who owe money to be paid at
Easter, At present, perhaps, you may think yourselves in thriving
circumstances, and that you can bear a little extravagance without
injury, but —

For age and want save while you may ;
No morning sun lasts a whole day.

Gain may be temporary and uncertain, but ever, while you live,
expense is constant and certain ; and // is easier to build two
chimneys than to keep one in fuel, as poor Richard says ; so,
Rather go to bed supperless than rise in debt.

BENJAMIN FRANKLliv 43

Get what you can, and what you get hold;

* Tis the stone that will turn all your lead into gold.

And; when you have got the Philosopher's stone, sure you will
no longer complain of bad times or the difficulty of paying taxes.

"IV. This doctrine, my friends, is reason and wisdom; but,
after all, do not depend too much upon your own industry and
frugality and prudence, though excellent things, for they may all
be blasted, without the blessing of Heaven; and therefore ask
that blessing humbly, and be not uncharitable to those that at
present seem to want it, but comfort and help them. Remember
Job suffered and was afterwards prosperous.

" And now, to conclude. Experience keeps a dear school^ but fools
will learn in no other, as Poor Richard says, and scarce in that,
for it is true We may give advice, but we cannot give conduct.
However, remember this, TTiey that won't be counselled, cannot be
helped ; and further, that If you will not hear reason, she will surely
rap your knttckks, as Poor Richard says."

Thus the old gentleman ended his harangue. The people heard
it and approved the doctrine ; and immediately practised the con-
trary, just as if it had been a common sermon ; for the auction
opened, and they began to buy extravagantly. I found the good
man had thoroughly studied my Almanacs, and digested all I had
dropped on these topics during the course of twenty-five years.
The frequent mention he made of me must have tired any one
else, but my vanity was wonderfully delighted with it, though I
was conscious that not a tenth part of the wisdom was my own
which he ascribed to me, but rather the gleanings that I had
made of the sense of all ages and nations. However, I resolved
to be the better for the echo of it, and though I had at first
determined to buy stuff for a new coat, I went away resolved to
wear my old one a little longer. Reader, if thou wilt do the same,
thy profit will be as great as mine. I am, as ever, thine to serve

thee

' Richard Saunders

[Commonly known as The Way to Wealth, from the last of Franklin's series
of almanacs: Poor Richard Improved, being an Almanac . . , for the year of
our Lord iJS^' The text followed, with the permission of the publishers,
G. P. Putnam's Sons, is that of Bigelow's Works, vol. i, pp. 441-452.]

44 AMERICAN PROSE

TO MR. STRAHAN

Philadelphia, 5 July, 1775.

Mr. Strahan : — You are a member of Parliament, and one of
that majority which has doomed my country to destruction. You
have begun to burn our towns, and murder our people. Look upon
your hands ; they are stained with the blood of your relations !
You and I were long friends ; you are now my enemy, and I am,

Yours,

B. Frankun

[ Works, vol. V, p. 534.]

TO JOSEPH PRIESTLEY

Philadelphia, 3 October, 1775.

Dear Sir: — I am to set out to-morrow for the camp, and,
having just heard of this opportunity, can only write a line to say
that I am well and hearty. Tell our dear good friend, Dr. Price,
who sometimes has his doubts and despondencies about our firm-
ness, that America is determined and unanimous; a very few
Tories and placemen excepted, who will probably soon export
themselves. Britain, at the expense of three millions, has killed
one hundred and fifty Yankees this campaign, which is twenty
thousand pounds a head ; and at Bunker's Hill she gained a mile
of ground, half of which she lost again by our taking post on
Ploughed Hill. During the same time sixty thousand children
have been born in America. From this data his mathematical
head will easily calculate the time and expense necessary to kill us

all, and conquer our whole territory. My sincere respects to ,

and to the club of honest Whigs at . Adieu. I am ever youi

most affectionately,

B. Franklin

[ Works, vol. V, pp. 539-540-]

BENJAMIN FRANKUN 45

A DIALOGUE BETWEEN BRITAIN, FRANCE, SPAIN,
HOLLAND, SAXONY, AND AMERICA

Britain. — Sister of Spain, I have a favor to ask of you. My sub-
jects in America are disobedient, and I am about to chastise them ;
I beg you will not fiimish them with any arms or ammunition.

Spain, — Have you forgotten, then, that when my subjects in
the Low Countries rebelled against me, you not only furnished
them with military stores, but joined them with an army and a
fleet ? I wonder how you can have the impudence to ask such
a flavor of me, or the folly to expect it !

Britain, — You, my dear sister France, will surely not refuse me
this favor.

France, — Did you not assist my rebel Huguenots with a fleet
and an army at Rochelle? And have you not lately aided pri-
vately and sneakingly my rebel subjects in Corsica? And do you
not at this instant keep their chief pensioned, and ready to head
a fresh revolt there, whenever you can find or make an oppor-
tunity ? Dear sister, you must be a little silly !

Britain, — Honest Holland ! You see it is remembered I was
once your friend; you will therefore be mine on this occasion.
I know, indeed, you are accustomed to smuggle with these rebels
of mine. I will wink at that ; sell them as much tea as you please,
to enervate the rascals, since they will not take it of me ; but for
God's sake don't supply them with any arms !

Holland, — Tis true you assisted me against Philip, my tyrant
of Spain, but have I not assisted you against one of your tyrants ;
and enabled you to expel him ? Surely that account, as we mer-
chants say, is balanced^ and I am nothing in your debt. I have
indeed some complaints against you^ for endeavoring to starve me
by your Navigation Acts ; but, being peaceably disposed, I do not
quarrel with you for that. I shall only go on quietly with my own
business. Trade is my profession ; 'tis all I have to subsist on.
And, let me tell you, I shall make no scruple (on the prospect of
a good market for that commodity) even to send my ships to Hell
and supply the Devil with brimstone. For you must know, I can
insure in London against the burning of my sails.

46 AMERICAN PROSE

America to Britain, — Why, you old bloodthirsty bully ! You,
who have been everywhere vaunting your own prowess, and de-
eming the Ainericans as poltroons ! You, who have boasted of
being able to march over all their bellies with a single regiment !
You, who by fraud have possessed yourself of their strongest for-
tress, and all the arms they had stored up in it ! You, who have a
disciplined army in their country, intrenched to the teeth, and pro-
vided with everything ! Do you run about begging all Europe not
to supply those poor people with a little powder and shot? Do
you mean, then, to fall upon them naked and unarmed, and
butcher them in cold blood ? Is this your courage ? Is this your
magnanimity ?

Britain. — Oh ! you wicked — Whig — Presbyterian — Serpent !
Have you the impudence to appear before me after all your dis-
obedience ? Surrender immediately all your liberties and prop-
erties into my hands, or I will cut you to pieces. Was it for
this that I planted your country at so great an expense ? That I
protected you in your infancy, and defended you against all your
enemies ?

America, — I shall not surrender my liberty and property, but
with my life. It is not true, that my country was planted at your
expense. Your own records refute that falsehood to your face.
Nor did you ever afford me a man or a shilling to defend nie
against the Indians, the only enemies I had upon my own account.
But, when you have quarrelled with all Europe, and drawn me
with you into all your broils, then you value yourself upon pro-
tecting me from the enemies you have made for me. I have no
natural cause of difference with Spain, France, or Holland, and
yet by turns I have joined with you in wars against them all. You
would not suffer me to make or keep a separate peace with any of
them, though I might easily have done it to great advantage.
Does your protecting me in those wars give you a right to fleece
me ? If so, as I fought for you, as well as you for me, it gives me
a proportionable right to fleece you. What think you of an
American law to make a monopoly of you and your commerce, as
you have done by your laws of me and mine ? Content yourself
with that monopoly if you are wise, and learn justice if you would
be respected 1

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 47

Britain, — You impudent ! Am I not your mother coun-
try ? Is not that a sufficient title to your respect and obedience ?

Saxony, — Mother country / Ha ! ha ! ha ! What respect have
you the front to claim as a mother country? You know that /am
your mother country, and yet you pay me none. Nay, it is but
the other day that you hired ruffians to rob mc on the highway
and burn my house ! For shame ! Hide your face and hold your
tongue ! If you continue this conduct, you will make yourself the
contempt of Europe !

Britain. — O Lord ! Where are my friends ?

France^ Spain^ Holland, and Saxony all together, — Friends !
Believe us, you have none, nor ever will have any, till you mend
your manners. How can we who are your neighbors have any
regard for you, or expect any equity from you, should your power
increase, when we see how basely and unjustly you have used both
your own mother and your own children f

[Works, vol. vi, pp. 1 18-123.]

GEORGE WASHINGTON

[George Washington was born, of old English stock, in Westmoreland G).,
Va., on Feb. 22, 1732. He was brought up chiefly by his mother, received a
limited education, and was early thrown upon his own resources as a sur-
veyor. The prosecution of his profession brought him into contact with
frontier life and led finally to his taking an active part in the campaigns against
the French and Indians for the possession of the Ohio region. .After his mar-
riage with Mrs. Custis in 1 759, he settled at Mt. Vernon as a prosperous planter.
Having sympathized from the first with the colonies in their contentions with
the mother country, he was made a member of the first Continental Congress,
and in 1775 became Commander-in-chief of the American forces. It is now
generally acknowledged that his prudence, determination, and military skill
were the greatest single factor in bringing the Revolution to a successful issue.
After the close of the war he retired to Mt. Vernon, where he took an active
interest in the efforts made to strengthen the union of states. He presided
over the Convention of 1 787, and was subsequently elected first President under
the new constitution. He served with great wisdom for two terms (1789- 1 797),
declining reelection in his famous Farewell Address. After his retirement he
was appointed lieutenant-general of the American forces, in view of the war
that seemed impending with France. He lived only a year longer, dying of
laryngitis and bad medical attention, on Dec. 14, 1799. The best edition
of his works is that of W. C. Ford, in fourteen volumes; but that of Jared
Sparks, in twelve volumes, is also valuable. The best biography, in moderate
compass, is that by Henry Cabot Lodge.

The appearance of Washington's name in a volume devoted to
the chief prose-writers of America seems to need some explanation.
He was extremely diffident of his own powers as a writer, and
although his fame has been growing steadily for over a century,
few of his admirers have ever ventured to claim for him the honors
of authorship. His Farewell Address has been assigned in con-
siderable part to Hamilton, and at least one editor of his letters
has felt obliged to correct his orthography and to elevate his dic-
tion. His style, when at its best, possesses little grace or variety ;
his voluminous writings are read by few who are not historical
students ; he does not need the added prestige of being considered

GEORGE WASHINGTON 49

a man of letters, even if his lack of general culture does not pre-
clude him from acquiring it ; — why, then, is he made to keep
company with Franklin and Jefferson ?

This question may be answered by one word, — character.
Washington's character was so great and noble that whatever he
wrote became great and noble also. No defects of early training,
no lack of the elements of style, no shrinking from authorship, could
prevent such a man from producing, whenever he wrote down what
was uppermost in his mind and heart, literature marked by the
most important of all qualities, — "high seriousness." If, as we
must believe, true literature, the " literature of power," is sepa-
rated from pseudo-literature, the literature of mere knowledge,
by the fact that it appeals powerfully to the emotions, then Wash-
ington's writings are in the main literature of no mean order. It
is impossible to read his more important letters, or his procla-
mations to his soldiers, or such documents as his address to the
governors of all the states on the occasion of his laying down his
command, or the rough draft of his Farewell Address^ without
feeling emotions of the most elevated kind. It is true that these
emotions are moral and intellectual rather than aesthetic in char-
acter, yet at times they are aesthetic too, for the sonorous and
stately dignity of some of his pages gives a pleasure that is not
unconnected with pure charm. The noble simplicity of the superb
address of 1783, which follows this criticism, — a document which
it would be impossible to praise too highly for its spirit and, one
might almost add, for its style — will illustrate the truth of the
contention here made.

Character, then, in the highest sense of the term, is what makes
Washington's writings live as literature to those who have learned
to revere him after long and zealous study. It is character com-
bined with one splendid opportunity that gives Lincoln fame as a
literary man, and it is by no means certain that Washington did
not have his splendid opportunity when he disbanded his troops,
even if we do not go further and attribute to him the only qualities
that make the Farewell Address an ever memorable document.
Washington, with his character, and perhaps his two great oppor-
tunities to express this character in words that move us still, is as
truly a literary man as Lincoln, and should stand with the latter
s

50 AMERICAN PROSE

in a class apart from all our other writers. Criticism of these two
great men, certainly the technical criticism of the student of rhet-
oric, is almost an impertinence; yet it would be equally an imper-
tinence for the student of history to claim them for his own behoof,
since they not merely did noble deeds, but uttered and recorded
noble words, that will stir mankind as long as sublime characters
inspire reverent admiration.

W. P. Trent

GEORGE WASHINGTON 5 1

TO THE GOVERNORS OF ALL THE STATES

Head-quarters, Newburg,
8 June, 1783.

Sir : — The great object, for which I had the honor to hold an
appointment in the service of my country, being accomplished, I
am now preparing to resign it into the hands of Congress, and to
return to that domestic retirement, which, it is well known, I left
with the greatest reluctance ; a retirement for which I have never
ceased to sigh, through a long and painful absence, and in which
(remote from the noise and trouble of the world) I meditate to
pass the remainder of life, in a state of undisturbed repose. But
before I carry this resolution into effect, I think it a duty incumbent
on me to make this my last official communication ; to congratu-
late you on the glorious events which Heaven has been pleased to
produce in our favor ; to offer my sentiments respecting some im-
portant subjects, which appear to me to be intimately connected
with the tranquillity of the United States ; to take my leave of your
Excellency as a public character ; and to give my final blessing to
that country, in whose service I have spent the prime of my life,
for whose sake I have consumed so many anxious days and watch-
ful nights, and whose happiness, being extremely dear to me, will
always constitute no inconsiderable part of my own.

Impressed with the liveliest sensibility on this pleasing occasion,
I will claim the indulgence of dilating the more copiously on the
subjects of our mutual felicitations. When we consider the mag-
nitude of the prize we contended for, the doubtful nature of the
contest, and the favorable manner in which it has terminated, we
shall find the greatest possible reason for gratitude and rejoicing.
This is a theme that will afford infinite delight to every benevolent
and liberal mind, whether the event in contemplation be considered
as the source of present enjoyment, or the parent of future happi-
ness ; and we shall have equal occasion to felicitate ourselves on
the lot which Providence has assigned us, whether we view it in a
natural, a political, or a moral point of light.

The citizens of America, placed in the most enviable condition,
as the sole lords and proprietors of a vast tract of continent, com-

52 AMERICAN PROSE

prehending all the various soils and climates of the world, and
abounding with all the necessaries and conveniences of life, are now,
by the late satisfactory pacification, acknowledged to be possessed
of absolute freedom and independency. They are, from this period,
to be considered as the actors on a most conspicuous theatre, which
seems to be peculiarly designated by Providence for the display of
human greatness and felicity. Here they are not only surrounded
with every thing, which can contribute to the completion of private
and domestic enjoyment ; but Heaven has crowned all its other
blessings, by giving a fairer opportunity for political happiness,
than any other nation has ever been favored with. Nothing can
illustrate these observations more forcibly, than a recollection of
the happy conjuncture of times and circumstances, under which
our republic assumed its rank among the nations. The foundation
of our empire was not laid in the gloomy age of ignorance and
superstition; but at an epoch when the rights of mankind were
better understood and more clearly defined, than at any former
period. The researches of the human mind after social happiness
have been carried to a great extent ; the treasures of knowledge,
acquired by the labors of philosophers, sages, and legislators,
through a long succession of years, are laid open for our use, and
their collected wisdom may be happily applied in the establishment
of our forms of government. The free cultivation of letters, the
unbounded extension of commerce, the progressive refinement of
manners, the growing liberality of sentiment, and, above all, the
pure and benign light of Revelation, have had a meliorating influ-
ence on mankind and increased the blessings of society. At this
auspicious period, the United States came into existence as a
nation ; and, if their citizens should not be completely free and
happy, the fault will be entirely their own.

Such is our situation, and such are our prospects ; but notwith-
standing the cup of blessing is thus reached out to us ; notwith-
standing happiness is ours, if we have a disposition to seize the
occasion and make it our own ; yet it appears to me there is an
option still left to the United States of America, that it is in their
choice, and depends upon their conduct, whether they will be
respectable and prosperous, or contemptible and miserable, as a
nation. This is the time of their pohtical probation; this is

GEORGE WASHINGTON 5 J

the moment when the eyes of the whole world are turned upon
them; this is the moment to estabUsh or ruin their national
character for ever; this is the favorable moment to give such
a tone to our federal government, as will enable it to answer
the ends of its institution, or this may be the ill-fated moment
for relaxing the powers of the Union, annihilating the cement
of the confederation, and exposing us to become the sport of
European politics, which may play one State against another,
to prevent their growing importance, and to serve their own
interested purposes. For, according to the system of policy the
States shall adopt at this moment, they will stand or fall ; and by
their confirmation or lapse it is yet to be decided, whether the
revolution must ultimately be considered as a blessing or a curse ;
a blessing or a curse, not to the present age alone, for with our
fate will the destiny of unborn millions be involved.

With this conviction of the importance of the present crisis,
silence in me would be a crime. I will therefore speak to your
Excellency the language of freedom and of sincerity without
disguise. I am aware, however, that those who differ from me in
political sentiment, may perhaps remark, I am stepping out of the
proper line of my duty, and may possibly ascribe to arrogance or
ostentation, what I know is alone the result of the purest intention.
But the recitude of my own heart, which disdains such unworthy
motives ; the part I have hitherto acted in hfe ; the determina-
tion I have formed, of not taking any share in public business
hereafter ; the ardent desire I feel, and shall continue to manifest,
of quietly enjoying, in private life, after all the toils of war, the
benefits of a wise and liberal government, will, I flatter myself,
sooner or later convince my countrymen, that I could have no
sinister views in dehvering, with so little reserve, the opinions
contained in this address.

There are four things, which, I humbly conceive, are essential
to the well-being, I may even venture to say, to the existence of
the United States, as an independent power.

First. An indissoluble union of the States under one federal
head.

Secondly. A sacred regard to public justice.

Thirdly. The adoption of a proper peace establishment ; and,

54 AMERICAN PROSE

Fourthly. The prevalence of that pacific and friendly disposi-
tion among the people of the United States, which will induce
them to forget their local prejudices and policies ; to make those
mutual concessions, which are requisite to the general prosperity ;
and, in some instances, to sacrifice their individual advantages to
the interest of the community.

These are the pillars on which the glorious fabric of our inde-
pendency and national character must be supported. Liberty is
the basis ; and whoever would dare to sap the foundation, or over-
turn the structure, under whatever specious pretext he may
attempt it, will merit the bitterest execration, and the severest
punishment, which can be inflicted by his injured country.

On the three first articles I will make a few observations, leav-
ing the last to the good sense and serious consideration of those
immediately concerned.

Under the first head, although it may not be necessary or
proper for me, in this place, to enter into a particular disquisition
on the principles of the Union, and to take up the great question
which has been frequently agitated, whether it be expedient and
requisite for the States to delegate a larger proportion of power to
Congress, or not ; yet it wiU be a part of my duty, and that of
every true patriot, to assert without reserve, and to insist upon,
the following positions. That, unless the States will suffer Con-
gress to exercise those prerogatives they are undoubtedly invested
with by the constitution, every thing must very rapidly tend to
anarchy and confusion. That it is indispensable to the happiness
of the individual States, that there should be lodged somewhere a
supreme power to regulate and govern the general concerns of
the confederated republic, without which the Union cannot be of
long duration. That there must be a feithful and pointed com-
pliance, on the part of every State, with the late proposals and
demands of Congress, or the most fatal consequences will ensue.
That whatever measures have a tendency to dissolve the Union,
or contribute to violate or lessen the sovereign authority, ought to
be considered as hostile to the liberty and independency of
America, and the authors of them treated according. And lastly,
that unless we can be enabled, by the concurrence of the States,
to participate of the fruits of the revolution, and enjoy the essen-

GEORGE WASHINGTON 55

tial benefits of civil society, under a form of government so free
and uncorrupted, so happily guarded against the danger of op-
pression, as has been devised and adopted by the articles of con-
federation, it will be a subject of regret, that so much blood and
treasure have been lavished for no purpose, that so many suffer-
ings have been encountered without a compensation, and that
so many sacrifices have been made in vain.

Many other considerations might here be adduced to prove,
that, without an entire conformity to the spirit of the Union, we
cannot exist as an independent power. It will be sufficient for
my purpose to mention but one or two, which seem to me of the
greatest importance. It is only in our united character, as an
empire, that our independence is acknowledged, that our power
can be regarded or our credit supported, among foreign nations.
The treaties of the European powers with the United States of
America will have no validity on a dissolution of the Union. We
shall be left nearly in a state of nature ; or we may find, by our
own unhappy experience, that there is a natural and necessary
progression from the extreme of anarchy to the extreme of
tyranny, and that arbitrary power is most easily established on
the ruins of liberty, abused to licentiousness.

As to the second article, which respects the performance of
public justice. Congress have, in their late address to the United
States, almost exhausted the subject; they have explained their
ideas so fully, and have enforced the obligations the States are
under, to render complete justice to all the public creditors, with
so much dignity and energy, that, in my opinion, no real friend to
the honor of independency of America can hesitate a single
moment, respecting the propriety of complying with the just and
honorable measures proposed. If their arguments do not pro-
duce conviction, I know of nothing that will have greater in-
fluence : especially when we recollect, that the system referred to,
being the result of the collected wisdom of the continent, must be
esteemed, if not perfect, certainly the least objectionable of any
that could be devised ; and that, if it shall not be carried into
immediate execution, a national bankruptcy, with all its deplorable
consequences, will take place, before any different plan can
possibly be proposed and adopted. So pressing are the present

$6 AMERICAN PROSE

circumstances, and such is the alternative now offered to the
States.

The ability of the country to discharge the debts, which have
been incurred in its defence, is not to be doubted ; an inclination,
I flatter myself, will not be wanting. The path of our duty is
plain before us ; honesty will be found, on every experiment, to
be the best and only true policy. Let us then, as a nation, be
just ; let us fulfil the public contracts, which Congress had un-
doubtedly a right to make for the purpose of carrying on the war,
with the same good faith we suppose ourselves bound to perform
our private engagements. In the mean time, let an attention to
the cheerful performance of their proper business, as individuals
and as members of society, be earnestly inculcated on the citizens
of America ; then will they strengthen the hands of the govern-
ment, and be happy under jts protection ; every one will reap the
fruit of his labors, every one will enjoy his own acquisitions, with-
out molestation and without danger.

In this state of absolute freedom and perfect security, who will
grudge to yield a very little of his property to support the common
interest of society, and insure the protection of government?
Who does not remember the frequent declarations, at the com-
mencement of the war, that we should be completely satisfied, if,
at the expense of one half, we could defend the remainder of our
possessions? Where is the man to be found, who wishes to
remain indebted for the defence of his own person and property
to the exertions, the bravery, and the blood of others, without
making one generous effort to repay the debt of honor and grati-
tude ? In what part of the continent shall we find a man, or body
of men, who would not blush to stand up and propose measures
purposely calculated to rob the soldier of his stipend, and the
public creditor of his due? And were it possible, that such a
flagrant instance of injustice could ever happen, would it not
excite the general indignation, and tend to bring down upon the
authors of such measures the aggravated vengeance of Heaven?
If, after all, a spirit of disunion, or a temper of obstinacy and per-
verseness should manifest itself in any of the States ; if such an
ungracious disposition should attempt to frustrate all the happy
effects that might be expected to flow from the Union ; if there

GEORGE WASHINGTON 57

should be a refusal to comply with the requisition for funds to
discharge the annual interest of the public debts ; and if that
refusal should revive again all those jealousies, and produce all
those evils, which are now happily removed, Congress, who have,
in all their transactions, shown a great degree of magnanimity and
justice, will stand justified in the sight of God and man ; and the
State alone, which puts itself in opposition to the aggregate wis-
dom of the continent, and follows such mistaken and pernicious
counsels, will be responsible for all the consequences.

For my own part, conscious of having acted, while a servant of
the public, in the manner I conceived best suited to promote the
real interests of my country ; having, in consequence of my fixed
belief, in some measure pledged myself to the army, that their
country would finally do them complete and ample justice ; and
not wishing to conceal any instance of my official conduct from
the eyes of the world, I have thought proper to transmit to your
Excellency the enclosed collection of papers, relative to the half-
pay and commutation granted by Congress to the officers of the
army. From these communications, my decided sentiments will
be clearly comprehended, together with the conclusive reasons
which induced me, at an early period, to recommend the adoption
of this measure, in the most earnest and serious manner. As the
proceedings of Congress, the army, and myself, are open to all,
and contain, in my opinion, sufficient information to remove the
prejudices and errors, which may have been entertained by any,
I think it unnecessary to say anything more than just to observe,
that the resolutions of Congress, now alluded to, are undoubtedly
as absolutely binding upon the United States, as the most solemn
acts of confederation or legislation.

As to the idea, which I am informed, has in some instances
prevailed, that the half-pay and commutation are to be regarded
merely in the odious light of a pension, it ought to be exploded
for ever. That provision should be viewed, as it really was, a rea-
sonable compensation offered by Congress, at a time when they
had nothing else to give to the officers of the army for services
then to be performed. It was the only means to prevent a total
dereliction of the service. It was a part of their hire. I may be
allowed to say, it was the price of their blood, and of your inde-

58 AMERICAN PROSE

pendency ; it is therefore more than a common debt, it is a debt
of honor ; it can never be considered as a pension or gratuity,
nor be cancelled until it is fairly discharged.

With regard to a distinction between officers and soldiers, it is
sufficient that the uniform experience of every nation of the
world, combined with our own, proves the utility and propriety of
the discrimination. Rewards, in proportion to the aids the
public derives from them, are unquestionably due to all its ser-
vants. In some lines, the soldiers have perhaps generally had as
ample a compensation for their services, by the large bounties
which have been paid them, as their officers will receive in the
proposed commutation ; in others, if, besides the donations of
lands, the payment of arrearages of clothing and wages (in which
articles all the component parts of the army must be put upon
the same footing), we take into the estimate the douceurs many
of the soldiers have received, and the gratuity of one year's full
pay, which is promised to all, possibly their situation (every cir-
cumstance being duly considered) will not be deemed less eligi-
ble than that of the officers. Should a further reward, however,
be judged equitable, I will venture to assert no one will enjoy
greater satisfaction than myself, on seeing an exemption from
taxes for a limited time, (which has been petitioned for in some
instances,) or any other adequate immunity or compensation
granted to the brave defenders of their country's cause; but
neither the adoption or rejection of this proposition will in any
manner affect, much less militate against, the act of Congress, by
which they have offered five years* full pay, in lieu of the half-
pay for life, yhich had been before promised to the officers of
the army.

Before I conclude the subject of public justice, I cannot omit
to mention the obligations this country is under to that meritori-
ous class of veteran non-commissioned officers and privates, who
have been discharged for inability, in consequence of the resolu-
tion of Congress of the 23d of April, 1 782, on an annual pension
for life. Their peculiar sufferings, their singular merits, and
claims to that provision, need only be known, to interest all the
feelings of humanity in their behalf. Nothing but a punctual
payment of their annual allowance can rescue them from the most

GEORGE WASHINGTON 59

complicated misery; and nothing could be a more melancholy
and distressing sight, than to behold those, who have shed their
blood or lost their limbs in the service of their country, without a
shelter, without a friend, and without the means of obtaining any
of the necessaries or comforts of life, compelled to beg their daily
bread from door to door. Suffer me to recommend those of this
description, belonging to your State, to the warmest patronage of
your Excellency and your legislature.

It is necessary to say but a few words on the third topic which
was proposed, and which regards particularly the defence of the
republic ; as there can be little doubt but Congress will recom-
mend a proper peace establishment for the United States, in
which a due attention will be paid to the importance of placing
the militia of the Union upon a regular and respectable footing.
If this should be the case, I would beg leave to urge the great
advantage of it in the strongest terms. The militia of this coun-
try must be considered as the palladium of our security, and the
first efTectual resort in case of hostility. It is essential, therefore,
that the same system should pervade the whole ; that the forma-
tion and discipline of the militia of the continent should be abso-
lutely uniform, and that the same species of arms, accoutrements,
and military apparatus, should be introduced in every part of the
United States. No one, who has not learned it from experience,
can conceive the difficulty, expense, and confusion, which result
from a contrary system, or the vague arrangements which have
hitherto prevailed.

If, in treating of political points, a greater latitude than usual
has been taken in the course of this address, the importance of the
crisis, and the magnitude of the objects in discussion, must be my
apology. It is, however, neither my wish or expectation, that the
preceding observations should claim any regard, except so far as
they shall appear to be dictated by a good intention, consonant
to the immutable rules of justice, calculated to produce a liberal
system of policy, and founded on whatever experience may have
been acquired by a long and close attention to public business.
Here I might speak with the more confidence, from my actual
observations ; and, if it would not swell this letter (already too
prolix) beyond the bounds I had prescribed to myself, I could

6o AMERICAN PROSE

demonstrate to every mind open to conviction, that in less time,
and with much less expense, than has been incurred, the war might
have been brought to the same happy conclusion, if the resources
of the continent could have been properly drawn forth ; that the
distresses and disappointments, which have very often occurred,
have, in too many instances, resulted more from a want of energy
in the Continental government, than a deficiency of means in the
particular States ; that the inefficacy of measures arising from the
want of an adequate authority in the supreme power, from a partial
compliance with the requisitions of Congress in some of the States,
and from a failure of punctuality in others, while it tended to damp
the zeal of those, which were more willing to exert themselves,
served also to accumulate the expenses of the war, and to frustrate
the best concerted plans ; and that the discouragement occasioned
by the complicated difficulties and embarrassments, in which our
affairs were by this means involved, would have long ago produced
the dissolution of any army, less patient, less virtuous, and less
persevering, than that which I have had the honor to command.
But, while I mention these things, which are notorious facts, as the
defects of our federal constitution, part;icularly in the prosecution
of a war, I beg it may be understood, that, as I have ever taken a
pleasure in gratefully acknowledging the assistance and support I
have derived from every class of citizens, so shall I always be
happy to do justice to the unparalleled exertions of the individual
States on many interesting occasions.

I have thus freely disclosed what I wished to make known,
before I surrendered up my public trust to those who committed
it to me. The task is now accomplished. I now bid adieu to
your Excellency as the chief magistrate of your State, at the same
time I bid a last farewell to the cares of office, and all the employ-
ments of public Hfe.

It remains, then, to be my final and only request, that your
Excellency will communicate these sentiments to your legislature
at their next meeting, and that they may be considered as the
legacy of one, who has ardently wished, on all occasions, to be use-
ful to his country, and who, even in the shade of retirement, will
not fail to implore the Divine benediction upon it.

I now make it my earnest prayer, that God would have you, and

GEORGE WASHtNGTON" 6l

the State over which you preside, in his holy protection ; that he
would incline the hearts of the citizens to cultivate a spirit of sub-
ordination and obedience to government ; to entertain a brotherly
affection and love for one another, for their fellow citizens of the
United States at large, and particularly for their brethren who
have served in the field ; and' finally, that he would most graciously
be pleased to dispose us all to do justice, to love mercy, and to
demean ourselves with that charity, humility, and pacific temper
of mind, which were the characteristics of the Divine Author of
our blessed religion, and without an humble imitation of whose
example in these things, we can never hope to be a happy nation.
I have the honor to be, with much esteem and respect. Sir,
your Excellency's most obedient and most humble servant.

[ Circular Letter Addressed to the Governors of all the States on Disbanding
the Army. The text followed, with the permission of the publishers, is that
employed by W. C. Ford, in his The Writings of George Washington^ G. P.
Putnam's Sons, 1 891, vol. x, pp. 254-265.]

THOMAS PAINE

[Thomas Paine was born at Thetford, in Norfolk County, England, Jan. 29,
1736/7. He was brought up in his father's faith, that of the Quakers, and
trained to his father's trade of stay-making. He received a grammar school
education, without the Latin; later, this was broadened by attendance upon
scientific lectures in London and by miscellaneous reading. After a brief ex-
periment in privateering (1756), he sought his livelihood in a singular variety
of occupations : he was, in turn or at the same time, stay-maker, schoolmaster,
tobacconist, grocer, and exciseman. He was twice married, in 1759 and in
1771, but had no children. In 1774, bankrupt in business and dismissed from
the excise, he separated by agreement from his wife and sailed for America.
He carried letters from Franklin, whom he had met in London, and with their
aid he secured employment in Philadelphia, first as a private tutor, then as
editor of a literary magazine. Here, at last, he discovered his vocation. With
the publication of Common Sense, in January, 1776, he became the leading
pamphleteer of the American Revolution; and this position he retained to
the close of the war by a series of patriotic brochures entitled The Crisis,
He served for a time as aide-de-camp to General Greene, and in 1777 and
1778 he acted as secretary to the Congressional Committee on Foreign Affairs.
In 1 78 1 he accompanied Colonel Laurens on an important and successfol
mission to the French Court. At the end of the war, after all these services,
he was as poor as at the beginning. His pay, as far as he got it, had barely
defrayed his expenses; he was too honest to line his pockets in any irregular
fashion; he had refused, from patriotic motives, to copyright his publica-
tions. The Republic showed some gratitude : at the instance of Washington,
Paine received grants of money from Congress and from the Pennsylvania
legislature, and from the legislature of New York a tract of confiscated land
near New Rochelle. In 1787, he sailed for Europe with a plan for building
iron bridges of novel construction and unprecedented length of span; but
the outbreak of the French Revolution drew him back into literature and poli-
tics. To Burke's attack upon the Revolution he responded with a book upon
the Rights of Man (1791). A second part (1792) caused his indictment and
condemnation for treason ; but he had already fled to France, where, as a friend
of liberty, he had received honorary citizenship and had been elected a member
of the Convention. In this capacity he acted with the Girondists and voted
against the execution of Louis XVI. During the Terror he narrowly escaped
the guillotine; but after ten months' imprisonment, he was liberated in
November, 1794. In 1794 and 1795 appeared his Age 0/ Reason, zn zttuk
upon the authenticity and morality of the Jewish and Christian Scripturet.

THOMAS PAINE 63

The first English printer was indicted and convicted (1797) for publishing
blasphemy, and other publishers were fined and imprisoned as late as 18 19.
In the United States also, to which Paine returned in 1797, the work was ill
received: it practically destroyed his popularity. He died June 8, 1809, and
was buried on his farm at New Rochelle. In 181 9 his remains were disin-
terred by William Cobbett and taken to England. Cobbett's intention of cele-
brating a second funeral and making of it a great Radical demonstration was
never carried out; in 1836 Paine's bones passed, with Cobbett's other effects,
into the hands of a receiver in bankruptcy; and they are understood to be
now scattered through England, held as curiosities or relics.]

The best collection of Paine's writings, of which only the most important
have been mentioned, is that edited by Moncure D. Conway (four vols., G. P.
Putnam's Sons, 1894-96). Conway has also written the best life of Paine
(two vols., G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1892).

" Where liberty is, there is my country," said Benjamin Frank-
lin. " Where liberty is not, there is mine," was Thomas Paine*s
reply. In their cosmopolitan spirit, as in the radical character of
their liberalism, both of these men were fair representatives of the
rationalistic eighteenth century ; but Paine had the crusading
instinct besides, and this carried him into enterprises of which his
cannier and more cautious friend would have been incapable. It
was as " a volunteer of the world," and not as a man having a
stake in play, that Paine, as soon as he reached America, espoused
the anti-British cause. It was as a friend of freedom that he
threw himself, to his own harm, into the central and fiercest whirl
of the French Revolution. It was as a knight-errant in the cause
of liberty that he plunged into the last and most disastrous of his
adventures, his attack upon orthodox Christianity ; for it seemed
to him that men bound by any faith less elastic than his own were
victims of the worst of tyrannies, bondsmen not only in their
actions but in their thoughts.

There was nothing especially novel in Paine's message to his
contemporaries. His political ideals — popular sovereignty, equal
rights, representative government — had been the commonplaces
of advanced Whig theory since the days of the English Common-
wealth; and in their French adaptations these theories had be-
come familiar to Europe. In his Rights of Man he advocated
also the limitation of governmental power by a written constitu-
tion ; but this idea had been formulated in England in 1647, ^^^

64 AMERICAN PROSE

been kept alive in the American colonies during the charter dis-
putes, and had been embodied in the state constitutions at the
very beginning of the Revolution. Paine's religious views were
scarcely more original ; they were substantially those of the Eng-
lish deists, tinged with Quakerism of the more radical school. It is
always a long way, however, from the formulation of theories to
their general acceptance, and such acceptance does not necessarily
imply an immediate change of practice. In his political writings
Paine did as much as any man, and perhaps more than any other
man, to popularize the dogmas of Locke and Rousseau and to
facilitate their embodiment in governmental institutions. His re-
ligious propaganda was less successful, and the hostility it aroused
has done much to obscure his political services.

Other political writers may have exercised a deeper and more
enduring influence, but few have had in their own day a larger
public. Of his Common Sense one hundred and twenty thousand
copies were sold within three months, and Conway estimates its
total sale at home and abroad, in the original and in translations,
at half a million copies. The first part of the Rights of Man, in
spite of the fact that EngHsh opinion was hostile to Paine's con-
clusions, found more than forty thousand purchasers in Great
Britain, and this without the advertisement which prosecution gave
afterwards to the completed work. Ten years after its completion,
Paine claimed that its total circulation, in English and in transla-
tions, had exceeded four hundred thousand. The popularity of
these tracts was partly owing to their timeliness, but mainly to
their almost perfect adaptation to their purpose. Paine knew
men. He knew what arguments would appeal to them, and how
these arguments should be put. He had in high degree the
faculty of lucid statement and of pat illustration. He could coin
phrases and even epigrams, and he was too wise to lessen their
value by coining too many. He knew that epigrammatic writing
is fatiguing reading, and that to appeal to the plain people a writer
should be known as a man of sense and not as a wit. Of humor
Paine was wholly destitute. A man of humor cannot be a profes-
sional agitator.

The eighteenth century pamphleteer was the immediate fore-
runner of the nineteenth century journalist, and Paine's best work

THOMAS PAINE 6$

is rather joumalisra than literature. Such work is in its nature
transitory. Paine's Age of Reason is to-day even more antiquated
than are the particular phases of faith which at the time especially
invited his attack ; for the fashion of scepticism has changed far
more than has the form of Christian belief. In his political writ-
ings there is more of permanent interest. We have grown scepti-
cal to-day about laws of nature, and we doubt the finality of
political dogmas ; but we recognize that Paine's political philoso-
phy was better adapted than ours to a revolutionary crisis, and
we cannot deny that it has left deep traces on our national habits
of thought. Paine's poHtical writings are a part of our history ;
and students of our history will always find it advisable to read

them.

MuNROE Smfth

66 AMERICAN PROSE

GOVERNMENT AND FREEDOM

But where, say some, is the King of America? I'll tell you,
friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like
the Royal Brute of Great Britain. Yet that we may not appear to
be defective even in earthly honours, let a day be solemnly set
apart for proclaiming the Charter ; let it be brought forth placed
on the Divine Law, the Word of God ; let a crown be placed
thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve
of monarchy, that in America the law is king. For as in absolute
governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to
be king ; and there ought to be no other. But lest any ill use
should afterwards arise, let the Crown at the conclusion of the
ceremony be demoHshed, and scattered among the people whose
right it is.

A government of our own is our natural right : and when a man
seriously reflects on the precariousness of human affairs, he will
become convinced, that it is infinitely wiser and safer, to form a
constitution of our own in a cool deliberate manner, while we have
it in our power, than to trust such an interesting event to time and
chance. If we omit it now, some Massanello^ may hereafter arise,
who, laying hold of popular disquietudes, may collect together the
desperate and the discontented, and by assuming to themselves
the powers of government, finally sweep away the liberties of the
Continent like a deluge. Should the government of America
return again into the hands of Britain, the tottering situation of
things will be a temptation for some desperate adventurer to try
his fortune ; and in such case, what relief can Britain give ? Ere
she could hear the news, the fatal business might be done ; and
ourselves suffering like the wretched Britons under the oppression
of the Conqueror. Ye that oppose independance now, ye know not
what ye do : ye are opening a door to eternal tyranny, by keeping
vacant the seat of government. There are thousands and tens of

1 Thomas Anello, otherwise Massanello, a fisherman of Naples, who after spirit-
ing up his countrymen in the public market-place, against the oppression of the
Spaniards, to whom the place was then subject, prompted them to revolt, and in
the space of a day became King. — Author^ s Note,

■ iir\

THOMAS PAINE 6;

thousands, who would think it glorious to expel from the Conti-
nent, that barbarous and hellish power, which hath stirred up the
Indians and the Negroes to destroy us ; the cruelty hath a double
guilt, it is dealing brutally by us, and treacherously by them.

To talk of friendship with those in whom our reason forbids us
to have faith, and our affections wounded thro' a thousand pores
instruct us to detest, is madness and folly. Every day wears out
the little remains of kindred between us and them ; and can there
be any reason to hope, that as the relationship expires, the affec-
tion will encrease, or that we shall agree better when we have ten
times more and greater concerns to quarrel over than ever?

Ye that tell us of harmony and reconciliation, can ye restore to
us the time that is past ? Can ye give to prostitution its former
innocence? neither can ye reconcile Britain and America. The
last cord now is broken, the people of England are presenting
addresses against us. There are injuries which nature cannot for-
give ; she would cease to be nature if she did. As well can the
lover forgive the ravisher of his mistress, as the Continent forgive
the murders of Britain. The Almighty hath implanted in us these
unextinguishable feelings for good and wise purposes. They are
the Guardians of his Image in our hearts. They distinguish us
from the herd of common animals. The social compact would
dissolve, and justice be extirpated from the earth, or have only a
casual existence were we callous to the touches of affection. The
robber and the murderer would often escape unpunished, did not
the injuries which our tempers sustain, provoke us into justice.

O ! ye that love mankind ! Ye that dare oppose not only the
tyranny but the tyrant, stand forth ! Every spot of the old world
is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round
the Globe. Asia and Africa have long expelled her. Europe
regards her hke a stranger, and England hath given her warning
to depart. O ! receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an
asylum for mankind.

[From Common Sense : Addressed to the Inhabitants of America, on the
following Interesting Subjects ^ viz. : I. Of the Origin and Design of Govern-
ment in General; with Concise Remarks on the English Constitution. II. Of
Monarchy and Hereditary Succession. III. Thoughts on the Present State
of American Affairs. IV. Of the Present Ability of America; with some

68 AMERICAN PROSE

Miscellaneous Reflections. Published January lo, 1776. The text of this ex
tract and those following is reprinted from M. D. Conway's The Writings 0/
Thomas Paine, by permission of the publishers, G. P. Putnam's Sons. Vol. i,
pp. 99-101.]

AN AMERICAN NAVY

No country on the globe is so happily situated, or so internally
capable of raising a fleet as America. Tar, timber, iron, and
cordage are her natural produce. We need go abroad for noth-
ing. Whereas the Dutch, who make large profits by hiring out
their ships of war to the Spaniards and Portugese, are obliged to
import most of the materials they use. We ought to view the
building a fleet as an article of commerce, it being the natural
manufactory of this country. 'Tis the best money we can lay out.
A navy when finished is worth more than it cost : And is that nice
point in national policy, in which commerce and protection are
united. Let us build ; if we want them not, we can sell ; and by
that means replace our paper currency with ready gold and silver.

In point of manning a fleet, people in general run into great
errors ; it is not necessary that one fourth part should be sailors.
The Terrible privateer, captain Death, stood the hottest engage-
ment of any ship last war, yet had not twenty sailors on board,
though her complement of men was upwards of two hundred. A
few able and social sailors will soon instruct a sufficient number of
active landsmen in the common work of a ship. Wherefore we
never can be more capable of beginning on maritime matters than
now, while our timber is standing, our fisheries blocked up, and
our sailors and shipwrights out of employ. Men of war, of seventy
and eighty guns, were built forty years ago in New England, and
why not the same now ? Ship building is America's greatest pride,
and in which she will, in time, excel the whole world. The great
empires of the east are mostly inland, and consequently excluded
from the possibility of rivalling her. Africa is in a state of bar-
barism ; and no power in Europe, hath either such an extent of
coast, or such an internal supply of materials. Where nature hath
given the one, she hath withheld the other ; • to America only hath
she been hberal to both. The vast empire of Russia is almost

,^^y^^

THOMAS PAINE 69

shut out from the sea ; wherefore her boundless forests, her tar,
iron, and cordage are only articles of commerce.

In point of safety, ought we to be without a fleet? We are not
the little people now, which we were sixty years ago ; at that time
we might have trusted our property in the streets, or fields rather,
and slept securely without locks or bolts to our doors and win-
dows. The case is now altered, and our methods of defence ought
to improve with our encrease of property. A common pirate,
twelve months ago, might have come up the Delaware, and laid
the city of Philadelphia under contribution for what sum he
pleased ; and the same might have happened to other places. Nay,
any daring fellow, in a brig of fourteen or sixteen guns, might have
robbed the whole Continent, and carried off" half a million of money.
These are circumstances which demand our attention, and point
out the necessity of naval protection.

Some perhaps will say, that after we have made it up with
Britain, she will protect us. Can they be so unwise as to mean,
that she will keep a navy in our Harbours for that purpose?
Common sense will tell us, that the power which hath endeavoured
to subdue us, is of all others, the most improper to defend us.
Conquest may be effected under the pretence of friendship ; and
ourselves, after a long and brave resistance, be at last cheated into
slavery. And if her ships are not to be admitted into our harbours,
I would ask, how is she to protect us? A navy three or four thou-
sand miles off" can be of little use, and on sudden emergencies, none
at all. Wherefore if we must hereafter protect ourselves, why not
do it for ourselves ? Why do it for another ?

The English list of ships of war, is long and formidable, but not a
tenth part of them are at anyone time fit for service, numbersof them
are not in being ; yet their names are pompously continued in the
Hst, if only a plank be left of the ship : and not a fifth part of such
as are fit for service, can be spared on any one station at one time.
The East and West Indies, Mediterranean, Africa, and other parts,
over which Britain extends her claim, make large demands upon
her navy. From a mixture of prejudice and inattention, we have
contracted a fialse notion respecting the navy of England, and have
talked as if we should have the whole of it to encounter at once,
and, for that reason, supposed that we must have one as large ;

yo AMERICAN PROSE

which not being instantly practicable, has been made use of bj
a set of disguised Tories to discourage our beginning thereoa.
Nothing can be further from truth than this ; for if America had
only a twentieth part of the naval force of Britain, she would be
by far an over-match for her ; because, as we neither have, nor claim
any foreign dominion, our whole force would be employed on our
own coast, where we should, in the long run, have two to one the
advantage of those who had three or four thousand miles to sail
over, before they could attack us, and the same distance to return
in order to refit and recruit. And although Britain, by her fleet,
hath a check over our trade to Europe, we have as large a one
over her trade to the West Indies, which, by laying in the neigh-
borhood of the Continent lies entirely at its mercy.

Some method might be fallen on to keep up a naval force in
time of peace, if we should not judge it necessary to support a
constant navy. If premiums were to be given to Merchants to
build and employ in their service, ships mounted with twenty,
thirty, forty, or fifty guns, (the premiums to be in proportion to
the loss of bulk to the merchant,) fifty or sixty of those ships,
with a few guardships on constant duty, would keep up a suffi-
cient navy, and that without burdening ourselves with the evil so
loudly complained of in England, of suffering their fleet in time
of peace to lie rotting in the docks. To unite the sinews of com-
merce and defence is sound policy; for when our strength and
our riches play into each other^s hand, we need feau: no external
enemy.

[From Common Sense, Writings, vol. i, pp. 103-106.]

THE CRISIS

These are the times that try men*s souls. The summer soldier
and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service
of their country ; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and
thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily con-
quered ; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the
conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too
cheap, we esteem too lightly : it is deamess only that gives every

THOMAS PAINE 7 1

thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon
its goods ; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article
as Freedom should not be highly rated. Britain, with an army to
enforce her tyranny, has declared that she has a right {not only to
tax) but "to BIND us in all cases whatsoever," and if being
bound in that manner^ is not slavery, then there is not such a thing
as slavery upon earth. Even the expression is impious ; for so
unlimited a power can belong only to God.

Whether the independence of the continent was declared too
soon, or delayed too long, I will not now enter into as an argument ;
my own simple opinion is, that had it been eight months earlier, it
would have been much better. We did not make a proper use of
last winter, neither could we, while we were in a dependant state.
However, the fault, if it were one, was all our own ; * we have none
to blame but ourselves. But no great deal is lost yet. All that
Howe has been doing for this month past, is rather a ravage than
a conquest, which the spirit of the Jerseys, a year ago, would have
quickly repulsed, and which time and a little resolution will soon
recover.

I have as little superstition in me as any man living, but my
secret opinion has ever been, and still is, that God Almighty will
not give up a people to military destruction, or leave them un-
supportedly to perish, who have so earnestly and so repeatedly
sought to avoid the calamities of war, by every decent method
which wisdom could invent. Neither have I so much of the
infidel in me, as to suppose that He has relinquished the govern-
ment of the world, and given us up to the care of devils ; and as
I do not, I cannot see on what grounds the king of Britain can
look up to heaven for help against us : a common murderer,
a highwayman, or a house-breaker, has as good a pretence as he.

[From the first Crisis, printed in the Pennsylvania Journal, December 19,
1776. fVritiftgs, vol. i, pp. 1 70- 1 71.]

♦ The present winter is worth an age, if rightly employed ; but, if lost or neglected,
the whole continent will partake of the evil ; and there is no punishment that man
does not deserve, be he who, or what, or where he will, that may be the means ol
sacrificing a season so precious and usefiiL — Autkor's Note, a citation from his
Common Sense.

72 AMERICAN PROSE

THE UNIVERSAL RIGHT OF CONSCIENCE

The French Constitution hath abolished or renounced ToUra"
Hon and Intolerance also, and hath established Universal Right
OF Conscience.

Toleration is not the opposite of Intolerance, but is the counter-
feit of it. Both are despotisms. The one assumes to itself the
right of withholding Liberty of Conscience, and the other of
granting it. The one is the Pope armed with fire and faggot, and
the other is the Pope selling or granting indulgences. The for-
mer is church and state, and the latter is church and traffic.

But Toleration may be viewed in a much stronger light. Man
worships not himself, but his Maker ; and the liberty of conscience
which he claims is not for the service of himself, but of his God.
In this case, therefore, we must necessarily have the associated
idea of two things ; the mortal who renders the worship, and the
Immortal Being who is worshipped. Toleration, therefore, places
itself, not between man and man, nor between church and church,
nor between one denomination of religion and another, but be-
tween God and man ; between the being who worships, and the
Being who is worshipped ; and by the same act of assumed
authority which it tolerates man to pay his worship, it presump-
tuously and blasphemously sets itself up to tolerate the Almighty
to receive it.

Were a bill brought into any Parliament, entitled, "An Act
to tolerate or grant liberty to the Almighty to receive the worship
of a Jew or Turk," or "to prohibit the Almighty from receiving
it," all men would startle and call it blasphemy. There would be
an uproar. The presumption of toleration in religious matters
would then present itself unmasked; but the presumption is not
the less because the name of " Man " only appears to those laws,
for the associated idea of the worshipper and the worshipped cdLii-
not be separated. Who then art thou, vain dust and ashes ! by
whatever name thou art called, whether a King, a Bishop, a Church,
or a State, a Parliament, or anything else, that obtrudest thine
insignificance between the soul of man and its Maker ? Mind thine
own concerns. If he believes not as thou believest, it is a proof

THOMAS PAINE 73

that thou believest not as he believes, and there is no earthly
power can determine between you.

With respect to what are called denominations of religion, if
every one is left to judge of its own religion, there is no such
thing as a religion that is wrong ; but if they are to judge of each
other's religion, there is no such thing as a religion that is right ;
and therefore all the world is right, or all the world is wrong.
But with respect to religion itself, without regard to names, and as
directing itself from the universal family of mankind to the Divine
object of all adoration, // is man bringing to his Maker the fruits
of his heart; and though those fruits may differ from each other
like the fruits of the earth, the grateful tribute of every one is
accepted.

A Bishop of Durham, or a Bishop of Winchester, or the arch-
bishop who heads the dukes, will not refuse a tythe-sheaf of wheat
because it is not a cock of hay, nor a cock of hay because it is
not a sheaf of wheat ; nor a pig, because it is neither one nor the
other ; but these same persons, under the figure of an established
church, will not permit their Maker to receive the varied tythes
of man's devotion.

[From Rights of Man^ being an Answer to Mr, Burke's Attack on the
French Revolution^ 1 791. Writings, vol. ii, pp. 325-326.]

A PROFESSION OF FAITH

It has been my intention, for several years past, to publish my
thoughts upon religion ; I am well aware of the difficulties that
attend the subject, and from that consideration, had reserved it to
a more advanced period of life. I intended it to be the last
offering I should make to my fellow-citizens of all nations, and
that at a time when the purity of the motive that induced me to it
could not admit of a question, even by those who might disap-
prove the work.

The circumstance that has now taken place in France, of the
total abolition of the whole national order of priesthood, and of
everything appertaining to compulsive systems of religion, and
compulsive articles of faith, has not only precipitated my inten-

74 AMERICAN PROSE

tion, but rendered a work of this kind exceedingly necessary, lest
in the general wreck of superstition, of false systems of govern-
ment, and false theology, we lose sight of morality, of humanity,
and of the theology that is true.

As several of my colleagues, and others of my fellow-citizens of
France, have given me the example of making their voluntary
and individual profession of faith, I also will make mine ; and I
do this with all that sincerity and frankness with which the mind
of man communicates with itself.

I believe in one God, and no more ; and I hope for happiness
beyond this life.

I believe [in] the equality of man, and I believe that religious
duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavouring to
make our fellow-creatures happy.

But, lest it should be supposed that I believe many other things
in addition to these, I shall, in the progress of this work, declare
the things I do not believe, and my reasons for not believing them.

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church,
by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish
church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I
know of. My own mind is my own church.

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian,
or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up
to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit,

I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who be-
lieve otherwise ; they have the same right to their belief as I
have to mine. But it is necessary to the happiness of man, that
he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in
believing, or in disbelieving ; it consists in professing to believe
what he does not believe.

It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so ex-
press it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man
has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as
to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe,
he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.
He takes up the trade of a priest for the sake of gain, and, in
order to qualify himself for that trade, he begins with a perjury.
Can we conceive anything more destructive to morality than this?

THOMAS PAINE 75

Soon after I had published the pamphlet Common Sense, in
America, I saw the exceeding probability that a revolution in the
system of government would be followed by a revolution in the
system of religion. The adulterous connection of church and state,
wherever it had taken place, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish,
had so effectually prohibited, by pains and penalties, every discus-
sion upon established creeds, and upon first principles of religion,
that until the system of government should be changed, those sub-
jects could not be brought fairly and openly before the world ; but
that whenever this should be done, a revolution in the system of
religion would follow. Human inventions and priest-craft would
be detected ; and man would return to the pure, unmixed, and
unadulterated belief of one God, and no more.

iThe Age of Reason^ '794-1 79S» chapter i, "The Author's Profession of
Faith." Writings, voL iv, pp. 21-23.]

THOMAS JEFFERSON

[Thomas Jefferson was born, of a good family, at Shadwell, Albemarle Co^
Va., April 13, 1743. He received an excellent education at William and
Mary College, saw much of the best society, studied law under Chancellor
Wythe, began its practice, and achieved at once a considerable success. At
the age of twenty-six he entered the House of Burgesses, and served off and
on with much distinction until the breaking out of the Revolution. He then
entered Congress, where he became the chief drafter of state papers, the
most important of these being the Declaration of Independence, After this
he returned to Virginian politics, labored successfully to modify the state laws
in a democratic direction, and served as governor for two years, during which
period his administration was much harassed by the British. In 1 783 he re-
entered Congress and took part in important legislation. The next year he
went to France as minister plenipotentiary, succeeding Franklin in 1 785. His
career as a diplomat was distinctly successful, but was cut short by his accept-
ance of the post of Secretary of State in Washington's first cabinet. Under
the new government he was subsequently made Vice-President in 1797 and
President from 1 801 to 1809. His two presidential administrations were not
marked by much executive strength, but the first secured to the country the
vast territory of Louisiana. He was succeeded by his disciple Madison, and
during his retirement at Monticello maintained his grip upon politics by his
large correspondence. From 181 7 to his death, on July 4, 1826, he was mainly
interested in founding the University of Virginia. Throughout his old age he
was looked up to as the chief political theorist and most typical republican of
the country, but this public homage entailed a hospitality that left him poor.
The best editions of his writings are the so-called Congressional, in nine vol-
umes, and that of P. L. Ford, not yet complete. ]

If Jefferson be judged by any single piece of work, except per-
haps the Declaration of Independence, or by the general qualities
of his style, he cannot in any fairness be termed a great writer.
His Notes on Virginia, his only book, may be justly said to be
interesting and valuable, but cannot rank high as literature. His
state papers, with the exception made above, and his official reports
are excellent of their kind, but their kind is not sufficiently literary
to warrant any one in holding them up as models. Even his count-

THOMAS JEFFERSON yy

less letters, while fascinating to the student of his character, are rather
barren of charm when read without some ulterior purpose. In short,
while Jefferson was plainly the most widely cultured of our early
statesmen and was thus in a real sense a man of letters, he would
be little read to-day if his fame depended either upon his author-
ship of a masterpiece in the shape of a book or upon his posses-
sion of a powerful or charming style.

We see at once that in at least two important respects Jefferson
is inferior to Franklin as a writer. Franklin possessed a style and
has given us a classic. Nor is it at all clear that, judged from the
point of view of mere readableness, Jefferson rises above or equals
some of his contemporaries, such as Fisher Ames, or Alexander
Hamilton, or his rival as a drafter of state papers, John Dickinson.
Yet he was surely in one important respect a greater writer than any
of these men, not even Franklin excepted. His was the most in-
fluential pen of his times upon his contemporaries, and it is to his
writings that posterity turns with most interest whenever the pur-
poses, the hopes, the fears of the great Revolutionary epoch become
matters of study. If Franklin's writings reveal a personality, Jeffer-
son's reveal, if the exaggeration may be pardoned, the aspirations
and ideals of an age.

They reveal also the personality of Jefferson himself, but so
subtle was that great man that we can never feel that we under-
stand him fully. We may learn to understand, however, with fair
thoroughness the theory of government that he had worked out for
himself from French and English sources ; we may see how every
letter he wrote carried his democratic doctrines further afield;
we may feel him getting a firm grasp not merely upon his con-
temporaries but upon generations yet to be ; finally, we can observe
yawning across his later writings the political chasm into which the
young republic was one day to fall. But books that enable us to
do all this are certainly great in their way, and so is the hand that
penned their contents. Jefferson is not a Burke, yet it is as true to
say that he must be read by any one who would comprehend the
origin and development of American political thought, as it is to
say that Burke must be read by any similar student of British
political thought.

But has not Jefferson given us a masterpiece? In a book, no ;

78 AMERICAN PROSE

in a state paper, yes. The Declaration of Independence ^ whatevei
may be the justice of the criticisms directed against this and that
clause or statement, is a true piece of literature, because ever since
it was written it has been alive with emotion. It may have
charged George III with crimes he never committed, but even if
we were to view it as pure fiction (which it is not), it would never-
theless, though we were to read it a thousand times, stir every one
of us that loves liberty and his native land and has a sense for the
rhetoric of denunciation and aspiration. It answers the chief
practical tests of good literature — the test of contemporaneous
popularity at home and abroad, and the test of current popular
appreciation. The man who drafted such a document knew the
spirit of his own people and could express it to their satisfaction ;
to deny him literary power of a high order would therefore be
pedantic.

In conclusion, while we are abundantly justified in including
Jefferson in any volume devoted to the important prose-writers of
America, we should not be justified in proposing his writings as
models for any student of English. Our national taste has changed,
and the fervent eloquence of the Declaration would be distinctly
out of place to-day. If we wrote letters to the same extent that
our ancestors did, we should still need to set before ourselves
writers of more ease and freedom and charm than Jefferson, if we
wished to produce upon our own contemporaries a tithe of the
influence he managed to convey in his somewhat cumbrous and
stiff though very subtle fashion. This is only to say that the art of
writing prose has made great strides since Jefferson's time ; but we
must not forget that, if his pen was not that of a chastened writer,
it was par excellence that of a ready and wonderfully effective one.

W. P. Trent

THOMAS JEFFERSON 79

DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

A DECLARATION by the Representatives of the United States of
America in General Congress assembled.

When in the course of human events it becomes "necessary for
one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected
them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth
the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of
nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of
mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel
them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident : that all men are created
equal ; that they are endowed by their creator with inherent and
inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pur-
suit of happiness ; that to secure these rights governments are in-
stituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent
of the governed ; that whenever any form of government becomes
destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or
to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation
on such principles and organizing its powers in such fonn, as to
them shall seem most likely to effect their happiness. Prudence
indeed will dictate that governments long established should not
be changed for light and transient causes : and accordingly all
experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer
while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing
the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train
of abuses and usurpations begun at a distinguished period and
pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce
them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty,
to throw off such government and to provide new guards for theii
future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these
colonies, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to
expunge their former systems of government. The history of the
present king of Great Britain is a history of unremitting injuries
and usurpations, among which appears no solitary fact to contra-
dict the uniform tenor of the rest \ but all having in direct object
the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To

So AMERICAN PROSE '

prove this let facts be submitted to a candid world, for the truth
of which we pledge a faith yet unsullied by falsehood.

He has refused his assent to laws the most wholesome and nee-
essary for the public good : •

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and
pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his
assent should be obtained, and when so suspended, he has utterly
neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large
districts of people unless those people would relinquish the right
of representation, in the legislature, a right inestimable to them,
and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, and
uncomfortable and distant from the depository of their public
records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance
with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative houses repeatedly and continu-
ally for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the right of
the people :

He has refused for a long time after such dissolutions to cause
others to be elected, whereby the legislative powers incapable
of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their
exercise, the state remaining in the mean time exposed to all the
dangers of invasion from without and convulsions within :

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states,
for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreign-
ers ; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither ;
and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands :

He has suffered the administration of justice totally to cease in
some of these states, refusing his assent to laws for establishing
judiciary powers :

He has made judges dependant on his will alone, for the tenure
of their offices and the amount and payment of their salaries :

He has erected a multitude of new offices by a self assumed
power and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and
eat out their substance :

He has kept among us in times of peace, standing armies and
ships of war without the consent of our legislatures :

THOMAS JEFFERSON 8 1

He has affected to render the military, independent of and
superior to the civil power :

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction for-
eign to our constitutions and unacknowledged by our laws, giving
his assent to their acts of pretended legislation, for quartering
large bodies of armed troops among us ; for protecting them by a
mock trial from punishment for any murders which they should
commit on the inhabitants of these states ; for cutting off our
trade with all parts of the world ; for imposing taxes on us with-
out our consent ; for depriving us in many cases of the benefits
of trial by jury ; for transporting us beyond the seas to be tried
for pretended offences ; for abolishing the free system of English
laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary
government and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once
an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute
rule into these colonies ; for taking away our charters, abolishing
our most valuable laws, and fundamentally the forms of our gov-
ernments, for suspending our own legislatures and declaring
themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases
whatsoever:

He has abdicated government here, withdrawing his governors,
and declaring us out of his allegiance and protection.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns
and destroyed the lives of our people :

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign merce-
naries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny al-
ready begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy unworthy
the head of a civilized nation :

He has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers
the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an
undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions of
existence :

He has incited treasonable insurrections of our fellow-citizens,
with the allurements of forfeiture and confiscation of our property :

He has constrained others, taken captive on the high seas to bear
arms against their country, to become the executioners of their
friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands :

He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating

82 AMERICAN PROSE

its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of distant
people, who never offended him, captivating and carrying them
into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in
their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium
of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian king of Great
Britain. Determined to keep open a market where Men should
be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing
every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable
commerce : and that this assemblage of horrors might want no
fact of distinguished dye, he is now exciting those very people to
rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he
has deprived them by murdering the people upon whom he also
obtruded them ; thus paying off former crime committed against
the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to
commit against the lives of another.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for re-
dress in the most humble terms ; our repeated petitions have been
answered only by repeated injuries. A prince whose cnaracter is
thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be
the ruler of a people who mean to be free. Future ages will
scarce believe that the hardiness of one man adventured within
the short compass of twelve years only, to build a foundation, so
broad and undisguised for tyranny over a people fostered and
fixed in principles of freedom.

Nor have we been wanting in attentions to our British brethren.
We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their
legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over these our
states. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emi-
gration and settlement here, no one of which could warrant so
strange a pretension : that these were effected at the expence of
our own blood and treasure, unassisted by the wealth or strength
of Great Britain : that in constituting indeed our several forms of
government, we had adopted a common king, thereby laying a
foundation for perpetual league and amity with them : but that
submission to their parliament was no part of our constitution nor
ever in idea, if history be credited ; and we have appealed to
their native justice and magnanimity, as well as to the ties of our
common kindred, to disavow these usurpations which were likely

THOMAS JEFFERSON 83

to interrupt our connection and correspondence. They too have
been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity, and when
occasions have been given them, by the regular course of their laws
of removing from their councils the disturbers of our harmony,
they have by their free elections re-established them in power.
At this very time they are permitting their chief magistrate to
send over not only soldiers of our own blood, but Scotch and
other foreign mercenaries, to invade and destroy us. These facts
have given the last stab to agonizing affections, and manly spirit
bids to renounce forever these unfeeling brethren. We must en-
deavor to forget our former love for them, to hold them as we
hold the rest of mankind enemies in war, in peace friends.

We might have been a free and a great people together ; but a
communication of grandeur and of freedom it seems, is below
their dignity. Be it so, since they will have it : the road to happi-
ness and to glory is open to us too ; we will climb it apart from
them, and acquiesce in the necessity which denounces our eternal
separation !

We therefore the representatives of the United States in Gen-
eral Congress assembled in the name and by the authority of the
good people of these states, reject and renounce all allegiance and
subjection to the kings of Great Britain and all others who may
hereafter claim by, through, or under them ; we utterly dissolve
all political connection which may heretofore have subsisted be-
tween us and the people or parliament of Great Britain, and
finally we do assert and declare these colonies to be free and
independant, and that as free and independant states, they have
full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish
commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent
states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration
we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our
sacred honour.

[Jefferson's draft of the Declaration of Independence as preserved in the
Department of State. It is here reprinted from P. L. Ford's Writings 0/
Thomas Jefferson^ voL ii, pp. 42-58, by permission of the publishers, G. P.
Putnam's Sons.]

CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN

[Charles Brockden Brown was born in Philadelphia, Jan. 17, 1771, and
died in the same city, of consumption, Feb. 22, 1 810. By his own statement,
made in a letter written just before his death, we learn that he never had
more than one continuous half-hour of perfect health. In spite of his short
life and his ill-health he accomplished much. At first he studied law, but aban-
doned it for literature. He was a frequent contributor to the magazines of the
time and was himself the editor of the Monthly Magazine and American Re-
view (1799), and the Literary Magazine and American Register (1803-8).
His first published work, The Dialogue of Alcuin (1797), dealt with questions
of marriage and divorce, and he was also the author of several essays on politi-
cal, historical, and geographical subjects. His novels followed each other with
astonishing rapidity : Sky Walk; or the Man Unknown to Himself {\'jc^%^
not published), Wieland ; or the Transformation (1798), Ormond; or the
Secret Witness (1799), Arthur Mervyn ; or Memoirs of the Year tyg^ ('799-
1800), Edgar Huntly ; or Memoirs of a Sleep- Walker (1801), Jane 7'aUfot
(1801), and Clara Howard; or the Enthusiasm of Love (1801). They met
with an equally astonishing success, and constitute the first important contri-
bution to American fiction. The standard text of Brown's works, based on
early editions, is that published by David McKay, and from this, with his per-
mission, the extracts are reprinted.]

When, in 1834, the historian Jared Sparks undertook the pub-
lication of a Library of American Biography^ he included in the
very first volume — with a literary instinct most creditable to one
so absorbed in the severer paths of history — a memoir of Charles
Brockden Brown. It was an appropriate* tribute to the first imag-
inative writer worth mentioning in America, and to one who was
our first professional author. He was also the first to exert a posi-
tive influence, across the Atlantic, upon British literature, laying
thus early a few modest strands towards an ocean-cable of thought.
As a result of this influence concealed doors opened in lonely
houses, fatal epidemics laid cities desolate, secret plots were
organized, unknown persons from foreign lands died in garrets

leaving large sums of money ; the honor of innocent women

CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN 85

was constantly endangered, though usually saved in time; peo-
ple were subject to somnambulism and general frenzy ; vast con-
spiracies were organized with small aims and smaller results. His
books, published between 1798 and 1801, made their way across
the ocean with a promptness that now seems inexplicable ; and
Mrs. Shelley in her novel of The Last Man founds her description
of an epidemic on " the masterly delineations of the author of
Arthur Mervyny

Shelley himself recognized his obligations to Brown ; and it is to
be remembered that Brown himself was evidently familiar with
Godwin's philosophical writings, and that he may have drawn
from those of Mary Wollstonecraft his advanced views as to the
rights and education of women, a subject on which his first book,
Alcuiftf provided the earliest American protest. Undoubtedly his
books furnished a point of transition from Mrs. Radcliffe, of
whom he disapproved, to the modern novel of realism, although
his immediate influence and, so to speak, his stage properties, can
hardly be traced later than the remarkable tale, also by a Philadel-
phian, called Stanley; or the Man of the World, first published in
1839 in London, though the scene was laid in America. This
book was attributed, from its profuse literary information, to Ed-
ward Everett, but was soon understood to be the work of a very
young man of twenty-one, Horace Binney Wallace. In this book
the influence of Bulwer and Disraeli is palpable, but Brown's con-
cealed chambers and aimless conspiracies and sudden mysterious
deaths also reappear in full force, not without some lingering
power, and then vanish from American literature forever.

Brown's style, and especially the language put by him into the
mouths of his characters, is perhaps unduly characterized by Pro-
fessor Woodberry as being "something never heard off the stage
of melodrama." What this able critic does not sufficiently recog-
nize is that the general style of the period at which they were
written was itself melodramatic, and that to substitute what we
should call simplicity would then have made the picture unfaith-
ful. One has only to read over the private letters of any educated
family of that period to see that people did not then express them-
selves as they now do ; that they were far more ornate in utter-
ance, more involved in statement, more impassioned in speech.

86 AMERICAN PROSE

Even a comparatively terse writer like Prescott, in composing
Brown's biography only sixty years ago, shows traces of the earlier
period. Instead of stating simply that his hero was a bom Quaker,
he says of him : " He was descended from a highly respectable
family, whose parents were of that estimable sect who came over
with William Penn, to seek an asylum where they might worship
their Creator unmolested, in the meek and humble spirit of their
own faith." Prescott justly criticises Brown for saying, " I was
fraught with the apprehension that my life was endangered ; " or
" his brain seemed to swell beyond its continent; " or " I drew
every bolt that appended to it," or " on recovering from deliquium^
you found it where it had been dropped ; " or for resorting to the
circumlocution of saying, " by a common apparatus that lay beside
my head I could produce a light," when he really meant that he
had a tinderbox. The criticism is fair enough, yet Prescott him-
self presently takes us half way back to the florid vocabulary of
that period, when, instead of merely saying that his hero was fond
of reading, he tells us that " from his earliest childhood Brown gave
evidence of studious propensities, being frequently noticed by his
father on his return from school poring over some heavy tome." If
the tome in question was Johnson's dictionary, as it may have been,
it would explain both Brown's phraseology and the milder ampli-
fications of his biographer. Nothing is more difficult to tell, in the
fictitious literature of even a generation or two ago, where a faith-
ful delineation ends and where caricature begins. The four-story
signatures of Micawber's letters, as represented by Dickens, go
but little beyond the similar courtesies employed in a gentle-
woman's letters in the days of Anna Seward. All we can say is
that within a century, for some cause or other, English speech has
grown very much simpler, and human happiness has increased in
proportion.

In the preface to his second novel {Edgar Huntly) Brown an-
nounces it as his primary purpose to be American in theme, " to
exhibit a series of adventures growing out of our own country,"
adding " That the field of investigation opened to us by our own
country should differ essentially from those which exist in Europe
may be readily conceived." He protests against "puerile super-
stition and exploded manners, Gothic castles and chimeras," and

-< ii

CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN Sy

adds: "The incidents of Indian hostility and the perils of the
western wilderness are far more suitable." All this is admirable,
but unfortunately the inherited thoughts and methods of the period
hung round him to cloy his style, even after his aim was emanci-
pated. It is to be remembered that almost all his imaginative
work was done in early life, before the age of thirty and before his
powers became mature. Yet with all his drawbacks he had
achieved his end, and had laid 'the foundation for American
fiction.

With all his inflation of style, he was undoubtedly, in his way, a
careful observer. The proof of this is that he has preserved for us
many minor points of life and manners which make the Philadel-
phia of a century ago now more familiar to us than is any other
American city of that period. He gives us the roving Indian ; the
newly arrived French musician with violin and monkey ; the one-
story farm-houses, where boarders are entertained at a dollar a
week ; the gray cougar amid caves of limestone. We learn from
him " the dangers and toils of a midnight journey in a stage coach
in America. The roads are knee deep in mire, winding through
crags and pits, while the wheels groan and totter and the curtain
and roof admit the wet at a thousand seams." We learn the
proper costume for a youth of good fortune and family, — " nan-
keen coat striped with green, a white silk waistcoat elegantly
needle- wrought, cassimere pantaloons, stockings of variegated silk,
and shoes that in their softness vie with satin." When dressing
himself, this favored youth ties his flowing locks with a black
ribbon. We find from him that "stage boats" then crossed
twice a day from New York to Staten Island, and we discover also
with some surprise that negroes were freely admitted to ride in
stages in Pennsylvania, although they were liable, half a century
later, to be ejected from street-cars. We learn also that there
were negro fi*ee schools in Philadelphia. All this was before
1801.

It has been common to say that Brown had no literary skill, but
it would be truer to say that he had no sense of literary construc-
tion. So far as skill is tested by the power to pique curiosity.
Brown had it ; his chapters almost always end at a point of espe-
cial interest, and the next chapter, postponing the solution, often

88 AMERICAN PROSE

diverts the interest in a wholly new direction. But literary struct
ure there is none : the plots are always cumulative and even
oppressive ; narrative is enclosed in narrative ; new characters and
complications come and go, while important personages disappear
altogether, and are perhaps fished up with difficulty, as with a
hook and line, on the very last page. There is also a total lack
of humor, and only such efforts at vivacity as this : " Move on, my
quill ! wait not for my guidance. Reanimated with thy master's
spirit, all airy light. A heyday rapture ! A mounting impulse
sways him ; lifts him from the earth.'* There is so much of monot-
ony in the general method, that one novel seems to stand for
all ; and the same modes of solution reappear so often — som-
nambulism, ventriloquism, yellow fever, forged letters, concealed
money, secret closets — that it not only gives a sense of puerility,
but makes it very difficult to recall, as to any particular passage,
from which book it came.

Thomas Wentworth Higginson

CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN 89

ADVENTURE WITH A GRAY COUGAR

While thus occupied with these reflections, my eyes were fixed
upon the opposite steeps. The tops of the trees, waving to and
fro in the wildest commotion, and their trunks, occasionally bend-
ing to the blast, which, in these lofty regions, blew with a violence
unknown in the tracts below, exhibited an awful spectacle. At
length, my attention was attracted by the trunk which lay across
the gulf, and which I had converted into a bridge. I perceived
that it had already somewhat swerved from its original position,
that every blast broke or loosened some of the fibres by which its
roots were connected with the opposite bank, and that, if the
storm did not speedily abate, there was imminent danger of its
being torn from the rock and precipitated into the chasm. Thus
my retreat would be cut off, and the evils from which I was en-
deavouring to rescue another would be experienced by myself.

I did not just then reflect that Clithero had found access to this
hill by other means, and that the avenue by which he came would
be equally commodious to me. I believed my destiny to hang
upon the expedition with which I should recross this gulf. The
moments that were spent in these deliberations were critical, and
I shuddered to observe that the trunk was held in its place by one
or two fibres which were abeady stretched almost to breaking.

To pass along the trunk, rendered slippery by the wet and un-
steadfast by the wind, was imminently dangerous. To maintain
my hold, in passing, in defiance of the whirlwind, required the
most vigorous exertions. For this end it was necessary to dis-
commode myself of my cloak, and of the volume which I carried
in the pocket of my cloak. I believed there was no reason to
dread their being destroyed or purloined, if left, for a few hours
or a day, in this recess. If left beside a stone, under shelter of
this cliff, they would, no doubt, remain unmolested till the disap-
pearance of the storm should permit me to revisit this spot in the
afternoon or on the morrow.

Just as I had disposed of these encumbrances and had risen
from my seat, my attention was again called to the opposite steep,
by the most unwelcome object that, at this time, could possibly

90 AMERICAN PROSE

occur. Something was perceived moving among the bushes and
rocks, which, for a time, I hoped was no more than a raccoon or
opossum, but which presently appeared to be a panther. His
gray coat, extended claws, fiery eyes, and a cry which he at that
moment uttered, and which, by its resemblance to the human
voice, is peculiarly terrific, denoted him to be the most ferocious
and untamable of that detested race.^

The industry of our hunters has nearly banished animals of prey
from these precincts. The fastnesses of Norwalk, however, could
not but afford refuge to some of them. Of late I had met them
so rarely, that my fears were seldom alive, and I trod, without
caution, the ruggedest and most solitary haunts. Still, however,
I had seldom been unfurnished in my rambles with the means of
defence.

My temper never delighted in carnage and blood. I found no
pleasure in plunging into bogs, wading through rivulets, and
penetrating thickets, for the sake of dispatthing woodcocks and
squirrels. To watch their gambols and flittings, and invite them
to my hand, was my darling amusement when loitering among the
woods and the rocks. It was much otherwise, however, with re-
gard to rattlesnakes and panthers. Those I thought it no breach
of duty to exterminate wherever they could be found. These
judicious and sanguinary spoilers were equally the enemies of man
and of the harmless race that sported in the trees, and many of
their skins are still preserved by me as trophies of my juvenile
prowess.

As hunting was never my trade or sport, I never loaded myself
with fowling-piece or rifle. Assiduous exercise had made me mas-
ter of a weapon of much easier carriage, and, within a moderate
distance, more destructive and unerring. This was the tomahawk.
With this I have often severed an oak-branch, and cut the sinews
of a catamount, at the distance of sixty feet.

The unfrequency with which I had lately encountered this foe,
and the encumbrance of provision, made me neglect, on this oc-
casion, to bring with me my usual arms. The beast that was now

1 The gray cougar. This animal has all the essential characteristics of a tiger.
Though somewhat inferior in size and strength, these are such as to make him
equally formidable to man. — Author's Note,

CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN 91

before me, when stimulated by hunger, was accustomed to assail
whatever could provide him with a banquet of blood. He would
set upon the man and the deer with equal and irresistible ferocity.
His sagacity was equal to his strength, and he seemed able to dis-
cover when his antagonist was armed and prepared for defence.

My past experience enabled me to estimate the full extent of
my danger. He sat on the brow of the steep, eyeing the bridge,
and apparently deliberating whether he should cross it. It was
probable that he had scented my footsteps thus far, and, should he
pass over, his vigilance could scarcely fail of detecting my asylum.
The pit into which Clithero had sunk from my view was at some
distance. To reach it was the first impulse of my fear, but this
could not be done without exciting the observation and pursuit of
this enemy. I deeply regretted the untoward chance that had
led me, when I first came over, to a different shelter.

Should he retain his present station, my danger was scarcely
lessened. To pass over in the face of a famished tiger was only
to rush upon my fate. The falling of the trunk, which had lately
been so anxiously deprecated, was now, with no less solicitude,
desired. Every new gust, I hoped, would tear asunder its re-
maining bands, and by cutting off all communication between the
opposite steeps, place me in security.

My hopes, however, were destined to be frustrated. The fibres
of the prostrate tree were obstinately tenacious of their hold, and
presently the animal scrambled down the rock and proceeded to
cross it.

Of all kinds of death, that which now menaced me was the
most abhorred. To die of disease, or by the hand of a fellow-
creature, was propitious and lenient in comparison with being rent
to pieces by the fangs of this savage. To perish in this obscure
retreat, by means so impervious to the anxious curiosity of my
friends, to lose my portion of existence by so untoward and ig-
noble a destiny, was insupportable. I bitterly deplored my rash-
ness in coming hither unprovided for an encounter like this.

The evil of my present circumstances consisted chiefly in sus-
pense. My death was unavoidable, but my imagination had
leisure to torment itself by anticipations. One foot of the savage
was slowly and cautiously moved after the other. He struck his

92 AMERICAN PROSE

claws so deeply into the bark that they were with difficulty with*
drawn. At length he leaped upon the ground. We were now
separated by an interval of scarcely eight feet. To leave the spot
where I crouched was impossible. Behind and beside me, the
cliff rose perpendicularly, and before me was this grim and terrific
visage. I shrunk still closer to the ground and closed my eyes.

From this pause of horror I was aroused by the noise occasioned
by a second spring of the animal. He leaped into the pit, in
which I had so deeply regretted that I had not taken refuge, and
disappeared. My rescue was so sudden, and so much beyond my
belief or my hope, that I doubted, for a moment, whether my
senses did not deceive me. This opportunity of escape was not
to be neglected. I left my place, and scrambled over the trunk
with a precipitation which had liked to have proved fatal. The
tree groaned and shook under me, the wind blew with unexampled
violence, and I had scarcely reached the opposite steep when the
roots were severed from the rock, and the whole fell thundering
to the bottom of the chasm.

My trepidations were not speedily quieted. I looked back with
wonder on my hairbreadth escape, and on that singular concur-
rence of events which had placed me, in so short a period, in abso-
lute security. Had the trunk fallen a moment earlier, I should
have been imprisoned on the hill or thrown headlong. Had its
' fall been delayed another moment, I should have been pursued ;
for the beast now issued from his den, and testified his surprise
and disappointment by tokens the sight of which made my blood
run cold.

He saw me, and hastened to the verge of the chasm. He
squatted on his hind-legs and assumed the attitude of one prepar-
ing to leap. My consternation was excited afresh by these appear-
ances. It seemed at first as if the rift was too wide for any power
of muscles to carry him in safety over ; but I knew the unparalleled
agility of this animal, and that his experience had made him a
better judge of the practicability of this exploit than I was. Still
there was hope that he would relinquish this design as desperate.
This hope was quickly at an end. He sprung, and his fore-legs
touched the verge of the rock on which I stood. In spite of
vehement exertions, however, the surface was too smooth and too

CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN 93

hard to allow him to make good his hold. He fell, and a
piercing cry, uttered below, showed that nothing had obstructed his
descent to the bottom.

[From Edgar Huntly ; or the Memoirs of a Sleep- Walker^ 1 801, chapter 12.
The text of this extract and those that follow is, with the permission of the
publisher, that of the edition issued in 1887, by David McKay, Philadelphia.
It is based on that of the original editions.]

SCENE AMONG INDIANS

Before a resolution could be formed, a new sound saluted my
ear. It was a deep groan, succeeded by sobs that seemed strug-
gling for utterance but were vehemently counteracted by the suf-
ferer. This low and bitter lamentation apparently proceeded
from some one within the cave. It could not be from one of
this swarthy band. It must, then, proceed from a captive,
whom they had reserved for torment or servitude, and who had
seized the opportunity afforded by the absence of him that
watched to give vent to his despair.

I again thrust my head forward, and beheld, lying on the
ground, apart from the rest, and bound hand and foot, a young
girl. Her dress was the coarse russet garb of the country, and
bespoke her to be some farmer's daughter. Her features denoted
the last degree of fear and anguish, and she moved her limbs in
such a manner as showed that the ligatures by which she was con-
fined produced, by their tightness, the utmost degree of pain.

My wishes were now bent not only to preserve myself and to
frustrate the future attempts of these savages, but likewise to re-
lieve this miserable victim. This could only be done by escaping
from the cavern and returning with seasonable aid. The sobs of
the girl were likely to rouse the sleepers. My appearance before
her would prompt her to testify her surprise by some exclamation
or shriek. What could hence be predicted but that the band
would start on their feet and level their unerring pieces at my
head?

I know not why I was insensible to these dangers. My thirst
was rendered by these delays intolerable. It took from me, in
some degree, the power of deUberation. The murmurs which

94 AMERICAN PROSE

had drawn me hither continued still to be heard. Some torrent
or cascade could not be far distant from the entrance of the
cavern, and it seemed as if one draught of cold water was a
luxury cheaply purchased by death itself. This, in addition to
considerations more disinterested, and which I have already
mentioned, impelled me forward.

The girl's cheek rested on the hard rock, and her eyes were
dim with tears. As they were turned towards me, however, I
hoped that my movements would be noticed by her gradually and
without abruptness. This expectation was fulfilled. I had not
advanced many steps before she discovered me. This moment
was critical beyond all others in the course of my existence.
My life was suspended, as it were, by a spider's thread. All
rested on the effect which this discovery should make upon this
feeble victim.

I was watchful of the first movement of her eye which should
indicate a consciousness of my presence. I labored, by gestures
and looks, to deter her from betraying her emotion. My attention
was, at the same time, fixed upon the sleepers, and an anxious
glance was cast towards the quarter whence the watchful savage
might appear.

I stooped and seized the musket and hatchet. The space
beyond the fire was, as I expected, open to the air. I issued forth
with trembling steps. The sensations inspired by the dangers which
environed me, added to my recent horrors, and the influence of
the moon, which had now gained the zenith, and whose lustre
dazzled my long-benighted senses, cannot be adequately described.

For a minute, I was unable to distinguish objects. This confu-
sion was speedily corrected, and I found myself on the verge of
a steep. Craggy eminences arose on all sides. On the left
hand was a space that offered some footing, and hither I turned.
A torrent was below me, and this path appeared to lead to it. It
quickly appeared in sight, and all foreign cares were, for a time,
suspended.

This water fell from the upper regions of the hill, upon a flat
projecture which was continued on either side, and on part of
which I was now standing. The path was bounded on the left by
an inaccessible wall, and on the right terminated, at the distance

CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN 95

of two or three feet from the wall, in a precipice. The water was
eight or ten paces distant, and no impediment seemed likely to
rise between us. I rushed forward with speed. My progress was
quickly checked. Close to the falling water, seated on the edge,
his back supported by the rock, and his legs hanging over the preci-
pice, I now beheld the savage who left the cave before me. The
noise of the cascade and the improbability of interruption, at least
from this quarter, had made him inattentive to my motions.

I paused. Along this verge lay the only road by which I could
reach the water, and by which I could escape. The passage was
completely occupied by this antagonist. To advance towards him,
or to remain where I was, would produce the same effect. I should,
in either case, be detected. He was unarmed ; but his outcries
would instantly summon his companions to his aid. I could not
hope to overpower him, and pass him in defiance of his opposition.
But, if this were effected, pursuit would be instantly commenced.
I was unacquainted with the way. The way was unquestionably
difficult. My strength was nearly annihilated ; I should be over-
taken in a moment, or their deficiency in speed would be supplied
by the accuracy of their aim. Their bullets, at least, would reach
me.

There was one method of removing this impediment. The
piece which I held in my hand was cocked. There could be no
doubt that it was loaded. A precaution of this kind would never
be omitted by a warrior of this hue. At a greater distance than
this, I should not fear to reach the mark. Should I not discharge
it, and at the same moment, rush forward to secure the road which
my adversary's death would open to me ?

Perhaps you will conceive a purpose like this to have argued a
sanguinary and murderous disposition. Let it be remembered,
however, that I entertained no doubts about the hostile designs of
these men. This was sufficiently indicated by their arms, their
guise, and the captive who attended them. Let the fate of my
parents be, likewise, remembered. I was not certain but that these
very men were the assassins of my family, and were those who had
reduced me and my sisters to the condition of orphans and depend-
ants. No words can describe the torments of my thirst. Relief
to these torments, and safety to my life, were within view. How

96 AMERICAN PROSE

could I hesitate ? Yet I did hesitate. My aversion to bloodshed
was not to be subdued but by the direst necessity. I knew, indeed,
that the discharge of a musket would only alarm the enemies who
remained behind ; but I had another and a better weapon in my
grasp. I could rive the head of my adversary, and cast him head-
long, without any noise which should be heard, into the cavern.

Still I was willing to withdraw, to re-enter the cave, and take
shelter in the darksome recesses from which I had emerged.
Here I might remain, unsuspected, till these detested guests
should depart. The hazards attending my re- entrance were to
be boldly encountered, and the torments of unsatisfied thirst were
to be patiently endured, rather than imbrue my hands in the
blood of my fellowmen. But this expedient would be ineffectual
if my retreat should be observed by this savage. Of that I was
bound to be incontestably assured. I retreated, therefore, but
kept my eye fixed at the same time upon the enemy.

Some ill fate decreed that I should not retreat unobserved.
Scarcely had I withdrawn three paces when he started from his
seat, and, turning towards me, walked with a quick pace. The
shadow of the rock, and the improbability of meeting an enemy
here, concealed me for a moment from his observation. I stood
still. The slightest motion would have attracted his notice. At
present, the narrow space engaged all his vigilance. Cautious foot-
steps, and attention to the path, were indispensable to his safety.
The respite was momentary, and I employed it in my own defence.

How otherwise could I act ? The danger that impended aimed
at nothing less than my life. To take the life of another was the
only method of averting it. The means were in my hand, and
they were used. In an extremity like this, my muscles would
have acted almost in defiance of my will.

The stroke was quick as lightning, and the wound mortal and
deep. He had not time to descry the author of his fate, but,
sinking on the path, expired without a groan. The hatchet
buried itself in his breast, and rolled with him to the bottom of
the precipice.

Never before had I taken the life of a human creature. On
this head I had, indeed, entertained somewhat of religious
scruples. These scruples did not forbid me to defend myself, but

CHARLES BROCK DEN BROWN 97

they made me cautious and reluctant to decide. Though they
could not withhold my hand when urged by a necessity like this,
they were sufficient to make me look back upon the deed with
remorse and dismay.

I did not escape all compunction in the present instance, but
the tumult of my feelings was quickly allayed. To quench my
thirst was a consideration by which all others were supplanted.
I approached the torrent, and not only drank copiously, but
laved my head, neck, and arms, in this delicious element.

[Edgar Huntly^ 1 801, chapter 16.]

PHILADELPHIA DURING THE YELLOW FEVER

These meditations did not enfeeble my resolution, or slacken
my pace. In proportion as I drew near the pity, the tokens of its
calamitous condition became more apparent. Every farm-house
was filled with supernumerary tenants, fugitives from home, and
haunting the skirts of the road, eager to detain every passenger
with inquiries after news. The passengers were numerous ; for
the tide of emigration was by no means exhausted. Some were
on foot, bearing in their countenances the tokens of their re-
cent terror- and filled with mournful reflections on the forlornness
of their state. Few had secured to themselves an asylum ; some
were without the means of paying for victuals or lodgings for the
coming night ; others, who were not thus destitute, yet knew not
whither to apply for entertainment, every house being already
overstocked with inhabitants, or barring its inhospitable doors at
their approach.

Families of weeping mothers and dismayed children, attended
with a few pieces of indispensable furniture, were carried in vehicles
of every form. The parent or husband had perished ; and the
price of some movable, or the pittance handed forth by public
charity, had been expended to purchase the means of retiring
from this theatre of disasters, though uncertain and hopeless of
accommodation in the neighbouring districts.

Between these and the fugitives whom curiosity had led to the
road, dialogues frequently took place, to which I was suffered to

98 AMERICAN PROSE

listen. From every mouth the tale of sorrow was repeated with
new aggravations. Pictures of their own distress, or of that of theii
neighbours, were exhibited in all the hues which imagination can
annex to pestilence and poverty.

My preconceptions of the evil now appeared to have fallen short
of the truth. The dangers into which I was rushing seemed more
numerous and imminent than I had previously imagined. I wa-
vered not in my purpose. A panic crept to my heart, which more
vehement exertions were necessary to subdue or control ; but I
harboured not a momentary doubt that the course which I had
taken was prescribed by duty. There was no difficulty or reluct-
ance in proceeding. All for which my efforts were demanded was
to walk in this path without tumult or alarm.

Various circumstances had hindered me from setting out upon
this journey as early as was proper. My frequent pauses to listen
to the narratives of travellers contributed likewise to procrastina-
tion. The sun had nearly set before I reached the precincts of
the city. I pursued the track which I had formerly taken, and
entered High Street after nightfall.

Instead of equipages and a throng of passengers, the voice of
levity and glee, which I had formerly observed, and which the
mildness of the season would, at other times, have produced, I
found nothing but a dreary solitude.

The market-place, and each side of this magnificent avenue,
were illuminated, as before, by lamps ; but between the verge of
Schuylkill and the heart of the city I met not more than a dozen
figures ; and these were ghostlike, wrapped in cloaks, from behind
which they cast upon me glances of wonder and suspicion, and as
I approached, changed their course, to avoid touching me. Their
clothes were sprinkled with vinegar, and their nostrils defended
from contagion by some powerful perfume.

I cast a look upon the houses, which I recollected to have
formerly been, at this hour, brilliant, with lights, resounding with
lively voices, and thronged with busy faces. Now they were closed,
above and below ; dark, and without tokens of being inhabited.
From the upper windows of some, a gleam sometimes fell upon
the pavement I was traversing, and showed that their tenants had
not fled, but were secluded or disabled.

CHARLES BROCK DEN BROWM 99

These tokens were new, and awakened all my panics. Death
seemed to hover over this scene, and I dreaded that the floating
pestilence had already lighted on my frame. I had scarcely over-
come these tremors, when I approached a house the door of which
was opened, and before which stood a vehicle, which I presently
recognized to be a hearse.

The driver was seated on it. I stood still to mark his visage,
and to observe the course which he proposed to take. Presently
a coffin, borne by two men, issued from the house. The driver
was a negro ; but his companions were white. Their features were
marked by ferocious indifference to danger or pity. One of them,
as he assisted in thrusting the coffin into the cavity provided for it,
said, " 1*11 be damned if I think the poor dog was quite dead. It
wasn't the^^^r that ailed him, but the sight of the girl and her
mother on the floor. I wonder how they all got into that room.
What carried them there ? " The other surlily muttered, " Their
legs, to-be-sure." " But what should they hug together in one
room for?"

" To save us trouble, to-be-sure."

" And I thank them with all my heart ; but, damn it, it wasn't
right to put him in his coffin before the breath was fairly gone. I
thought the last look he gave me told me to stay a few minutes."

" Pshaw ! He could not live. The sooner dead the better for
him ; as well as for us. Did you mark how he eyed us when we
carried away his wife and daughter? I never cried in my life,
since I was knee-high, but curse me if I ever felt in better tune for
the business than just then. Hey ! " continued he, looking up,
and observing me standing a few paces distant, and listening to
their discourse ; " what's wanted? Anybody dead ? "

I stayed not to answer or parley, but hurried forward. My
joints trembled, and cold drops stood on my forehead. I was
ashamed of my own infirmity ; and, by vigorous efforts of my
reason, regained some degree of composure. The evening had
now advanced, and it behooved me to procure accommodation at
some of the inns.

These were easily distinguished by their signs, but many were
without inhabitants. At length I lighted upon one, the hall of
which was open and the windows lifted. After knocking for some

lOO AMERICAN PROSE

time, a young girl appeared, with many marks of distress. In an
swer to my question, she answered that both her parents were sick,
and that they could receive no one. I inquired, in vain, for any
other tavern at which strangers might be accommodated. She
knew of none such, and left me, on some one's calling to her from
above, in the midst of my embarrassment. After a moment's
pause, I returned, discomfited and perplexed, to the street.

I proceeded, in a considerable degree, at random. At length I
reached a spacious building in Fourth Street, which the sign-post
showed me to be an inn. I knocked loudly and often at the door.
At length a female opened the window of the second story, and, in
a tone of peevishness, demanded what I wanted. I told her that
I wanted lodging.

" Go hunt for it somewhere else," said she ; " you'll find none
here." I began to expostulate; but she shut the window with
quickness, and left me to my own reflections.

I began now to feel some regret at the journey I had taken.
Never, in the depth of caverns or forests, was I equally conscious
of loneliness. I was surrounded by the habitations of men ; but
I was destitute of associate or friend. I had money, but a horse-
shelter, or a morsel of food could not be purchased. I came for
the purpose of relieving others, but stood in the utmost need my-
self. Even in health ray condition was helpless and forlorn ; but
what would become of me should this fatal malady be contracted?
To hope that an asylum would be afforded to a sick man, which
was denied to one in health, was unreasonable.

[^Arthur Mervyn; or Memoirs of the Year 17^3* 1 799-1800, chapter 15.]

DANIEL WEBSTER

[Daniel Webster was born in Salisbury, N.H., Jan. i8, 1782. He was
graduated from Dartmouth College in 1 801, was admitted to the bar in 1805,
and soon became prominent as an advocate and as an orator. He was
elected to the lower house of Congress for the first time in 181 3, and again
in 181 5 and 1823. In 1827 he entered the Senate, serving there until Presi-
dent Harrison appointed him Secretary of State in 1 841. Resigning in 1 843,
after concluding the important Ashburton Treaty with England, he re-entered
the Senate in 1845. In 1850, he was once more appointed Secretary of State
by President Fillmore. He died at his home in Marshfield, Mass., Oct. 24,
1852. The standard edition of his works, the text of which is followed in
this volume, is that of 1 85 1. The best biography is that by George Ticknor
Curtis.

Daniel Webster was beyond all question the greatest of Ameri-
can orators ; in the opinion of many students of oratorical style, he
pronounced at least one oration that surpasses any other recorded
specimen of human eloquence. He was, indeed, peculiarly and
uniquely fortunate both in his natural gifts and in the circum-
stances of his remarkable career. There have been orators like
Burke, whose elocution was noble in diction and weighty in
thought, yet whose impressiveness was marred by the speaker's
own physical insignificance or by an imperfect delivery; there
have been still others who, like Henry Clay, produced upon their
immediate hearers an effect that was almost wholly due to charm
of utterance and of manner ; but very seldom has it been given to
any one to unite, in perfect balance and proportion, the physical,
the intellectual, and the emotional attributes that raise their pos-
sessor to the rank of a great master of eloquence.

Webster, however, had all the natural gifts and all the ac-
quired graces that go to the endowment of the ideal orator. A
man of stately presence, and with a face indicative of extraor-
dinary power, his manner was at once easy and unaffected, yet
stately and majestic. His intellectual gifts were no less striking,
— a marvellous memory richly stored with facts and illustrations

lOI

102 AMERICAN PROSE

drawn from a large experience and the widest reading, a keenl}
active, vigorous, and logical mind that pierced through the outer
shell of any question and touched at once its very core, an unfail-
ing fund of common sense and perfect reasonableness, a tact and
taste that never made rhetorical mistakes nor allowed him for a
moment to go too far, and finally a persuasive human sympathy
thaf imparted to his stateliest and most massive utterances a
warmth and glow and color such as vivified them and made them
speak to the emotions as well as to the intellect. His voice was
wonderful in its range and quality. It carried his lightest words
with perfect ease to the farthest limits of the vast audiences that
heard him, and it had at once an exquisite beauty of tone and a
sonorous organ-quality that, in the supreme moments of his ora-
tory, was instinct with an indescribably thrilling power.

Webster was no less fortunate in the time and circumstances of
his remarkable career. The period of our national history extend-
ing from the close of the War of 1812 to the year of his death
was a period when the most vital issues were flung into the politi-
cal arena. These issues involved the broadest questions of con-
stitutional interpretation, and they touched alike the popular heart
and the chords of conscience ; so that both intellect and senti-
ment were aroused by their discussion, and the whole nation
watched with the intensest eagerness the forensic battle that sprang
out of them. The Senate of the United States was for forty years
a battle-ground toward which every eye was turned to note each
phase of the struggle and to judge each combatant ; and hence all
who contended there did so with a knowledge that whether they
achieved success or failure the result would at once be recognized
by their countrymen. And this knowledge, coupled with the im-
portance of the issues that were at stake, made it inevitable that
the very ablest statesmen, the foremost orators, and the most
acute debaters should be pitted there against each other. Here
again was Webster fortunate ; for under different conditions the
natural indolence of his temperament might never have been
wholly cast aside, but might have been allowed to obscure and
leave untested the tremendous powers that were slumbering be-
neath it. With antagonists whose intellectual gifts were almost
equal to his own, and with the ardor of emulation always intensely

DANIEL WEBSTER IO3

stimulated, Webster was compelled to put forth every atom of
his strength. He was throughout his whole senatorial career a
giant roused to conflict, a champion always fully armed and ready
at any moment to meet all challengers and give instant battle for
the cause that he had made his own.

But most of all was Webster fortunate in the cause itself.
Entering the Senate at a time when the momentous struggle was
beginning between those who viewed the State as a federation of
independent sovereignties linked together for purposes of expedi-
ency alone, and those who regarded it as a united nation whose
constituent parts had been welded together into an imperishable
unity, it was with the latter that Webster ranged himself at once,
and he at once became their acknowledged chief. Therefore,
throughout the rest of his career he stood forth as the unflinching
champion of the national ideal, one whose every utterance ap-
pealed in some way to the pride of nationality and to the desire
of the people to be great and strong and magnificent; and he
pictured this ideal in such splendid colors, and he made it seem
so real, so stately, and so glorious that in the end the majority of
his countrymen accepted it as their own and held to it unflinch-
ingly when at the last it had to stand the final test of war.

Webster's style had about it always something Roman in its
spirit and expression. It was always strong and stately, always
noble and majestic, always virile and intensely masterful. Yet
there was no heaviness about it, as there was about the style of
Benton; his thought flashed through it all with a certain lithe
alertness that is seldom joined to so much pomp and pageantry.
Technically described in the language of ancient rhetorical criti-
cism, it was a perfect example of the "Rhodian" style, — the
middle style, as distinguished fi*om the florid "Asiatic" manner
of orators like Legar6 and Thomas Corwin, and from the Attic
simplicity of his lifelong antagonist Calhoun. The closest parallel
to it is to be found in the oratory of Cicero. Its rhetoric is as per-
fect in its choice of phrase, in its marshalling of the sentences, in
the rhythmical swing of its cadences, and in the beauty and exquisite
fitness of its imagery. Yet it is far superior to Cicero's In this,
that we are never conscious in Webster of that combination of
weakness and insincerity, of pose and special pleading which the

104 AMERICAN PROSE

Ciceronian oratory exhibits, nor of the cheap facility of the trained
advocate, who can argue with equal plausibility on any side of
every question. Webster was always intensely in earnest; the
note of perfect conviction dominates his utterances ; and there is
an undercurrent of the passion that stirs the blood and gives en-
during vitality to the words and thoughts of the inspired orator.

The Websterian style, whether it be studied in the legal or in
the forensic oratory of its master, or in his formal correspondence,
will be found to show at all times the same essential character-
istics, though with modifications to suit the occasion or the
personality of his auditors. In his legal oratory he is simpler and
more direct than elsewhere ; in his great senatorial speeches he is
more rhetorical and splendid ; in his correspondence he is more
terse and pointed ; yet he is always Roman.

The grandest and most magnificent of all his orations is the
celebrated reply to Hayne, which was pronounced at the climax of
a great national debate, on an occasion of intense dramatic inter-
est, and under circumstances which suggest a gladiatorial combat,
with the whole nation as spectators. Of this oration no words can
exaggerate the importance or the power. It is indeed, to borrow
a phrase of Quintilian, less a creation of eloquence than the very
voice of eloquence itself. Every quality of the bom orator is
seen in it — the art of arrangement, the symmetrical development
of the central thought, the effective marshalling of facts, the grace
of diction, the beauty of imagery, and, in the grand peroration,
the whole power and sustained magnificence of a great imagina-
tive intellect aflame with passion, yet conscious of its own irre-
sistible strength, so that it does not hurry, but sweeps along with
an ever-increasing impetus, until it carries all before it, and ends
in a burst of stirring music that is overwhelming in its sublimity
and splendor. This oration must stand as the supreme example of
successful oratory, since its words are as thrilling to-day as at the
very moment when they were first spoken ; and from that moment
they became a living power in our political life ; for, declaimed
by every schoolboy throughout the land, they sank down deep
into the national consciousness, and thus in the end profoundly
influenced the whole future of our national history.

Harry Thurston Peck

DANIEL WEBSTER 10$

THE EXAMPLE OF OUR COUNTRY

And now, let us indulge an honest exultation in the conviction
of the benefit which the example of our country has produced,
and is likely to produce, on human freedom and human happiness.
Let us endeavor to comprehend in all its magnitude, and to feel
in all its importance, the part assigned to us in the great drama of
human affairs. We are placed at the head of the system of repre-
sentative and popular governments. Thus far our example shows
that such governments are compatible, not only with respectability
and power, but with repose, with peace, with security of personal
rights, with good laws, and a just administration.

We are not propagandists. Wherever other systems are pre-
ferred, either as being thought better in themselves, or as better
suited to existing condition, we leave the preference to be enjoyed.
Our history hitherto proves, . however, that the popular form is
practicable, and that with wisdom and knowledge men may govern
themselves ; and the duty incumbent on us is, to preserve the con-
sistency of this cheering example, and take care that nothing may
weaken its authority with the world. If, in our case, the represent-
ative system ultimately fail, popular governments must be pro-
nounced impossible. No combination of circumstances more
favorable to the experiment can ever be expected to occur. The
last hopes of mankind, therefore, rest with us ; and if it should be
proclaimed, that our example had become an argument against the
experiment, the knell of popular liberty would be sounded through-
out the earth.

These are excitements to duty ; but they are not suggestions of
doubt. Our history and our condition, all that is gone before us,
and all that surrounds us, authorize the belief, that popular govern-
ments, though subject to occasional variations, in form perhaps
not always for the better, may yet, in their general character, be
as durable and permanent as other systems. We know, indeed,
that in our country any other is impossible. The principle of free
governments adheres to the American soil. It is bedded in it,
immovable as its mountains.

And let the sacred obligations which have devolved on this

I06 AMERICAN PROSE

generation, and on us, sink deep into our hearts. Those who
estabUshed our liberty and our government are daily dropping from
among us. The great trust now descends to new hands. Let us
apply ourselves to that which is presented to us, as our appropri-
ate object We can win no laurels in a war for independence.
Earlier and worthier hands have gathered them all. Nor are there
places for us by the side of Solon, and Alfred, and other founders
of states. Our fathers have filled them. But there remains to us
a great duty of defence and preservation ; and there is opened to
us, also, a noble pursuit, to which the spirit of the times strongly
invites us. Our proper business is improvement. Let our age be
the age of improvement. In a day of peace, let us advance the
arts of peace and the works of peace. Let us develop the re-
sources of our land, call forth its powers, build up its institutions,
promote all its great interests, and see whether we also, in our day
and generation, may not perform something worthy to be remem-
bered. Let us cultivate a true spirit of union and harmony. In
pursuing the great objects which our condition points out to us, let
us act under a settled conviction, and an habitual feeling, that these
twenty- four States are one country. Let our conceptions be en-
larged to the circle of our duties. Let us extend our ideas over
the whole of the vast field in which we are called to act. Let our
object be, our country, our whole country, and nothing but
OUR country. And, by the blessing of God, may that country
itself become a vast and splendid monument, not of oppression
and terror, but of Wisdom, of Peace, and of Liberty, upon which
the world may gaze with admiration for ever !

[From The Bunker Hill Monument^ an address delivered at the laying of
the corner-stone of the Bunker Hill Monument at Charlestown, Mass., June
17, 1825. Works, vol. i, pp. 76-78.]

SPEECH OF JOHN ADAMS

It was for Mr. Adams to reply to arguments like these. We
know his opinions, and we know his character. He would com-
mence with his accustomed directness and earnestness.

" Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I give my hand

DANIEL WEBSTER IO7

and my heart to this vote. It is true, indeed, that in the begin-
ning we aimed not at independence. But there's a Divinity which
shapes our ends. The injustice of England has driven us to
arms ; and, Winded to her own interest for our good, she has
. obstinately persisted, till independence is now within our grasp.
We have but to reach forth to it, and it is ours. Why, then,
should we defer the Declaration? Is any man so weak as now
to hope for a reconciliation with England, which shall leave
either safety to the country and its liberties, or safety to his own
life and his own honor? Are not you, Sir, who sit in that chair,
is not he, our venerable colleague near you, are you not both
already the proscribed and predestined objects of punishment and
of vengeance ? Cut off from all hope of royal clemency, what are
you, what can you be, while the power of England remains, but
outlaws ? If we postpone independence, do we mean to carry on,
or to give up, the war ? Do we mean to submit to the measures
of Parliament, Boston Port Bill and all ? Do we mean to submit,
and consent that we ourselves shall be ground to powder, and our
country and its rights trodden down in the dust? I know we do
not mean to submit. We never shall submit. Do we intend to
violate that most solemn obligation ever entered into by men,
that plighting, before God, of our sacred honor to Washington,
when, putting him forth to incur the dangers of war, as well as the
poUtical hazards of the times, we promised to adhere to him, in
every extremity, with our fortunes and our lives ? I know there
is not a man here, who would not rather see a general conflagra-
tion sweep over the land, or an earthquake sink it, than one jot or
tittle of that plighted faith fall to the ground. For myself, having,
twelve months ago, in this place, moved you, that George Wash-
ington be appointed commander of the forces raised, or to be
raised, for defence of American liberty, may my right hand forget
her cunning, and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I
hesitate or waver in the support I give him.

** The war, then, must go on. We must fight it through. And
if the war must go on, why put off longer the Declaration of Inde-
pendence? That measure will strengthen us. It will give us
character abroad. The nations will then treat with us, which
they never can do while we acknowledge ourselves subjects, in

I08 AMERICAN PROSE

•

arms against our sovereign. Nay, I maintain that England her-
self will sooner treat for peace with us on the footing of indepen-
dence, than consent, by repealing her acts, to acknowledge that
her whole conduct towards us has been a course of injustice and
oppression. Her pride will be less wounded by submitting to
that course of things which now predestinates our independence,
than by yielding the points in controversy to her rebellious sub-
jects. The former she would regard as the result of fortune ; the
latter she would feel as her own deep disgrace. Why, then, why
then. Sir, do we not as soon as possible change this from a civil to
a national war? And since we must fight it through, why not put
ourselves in a state to enjoy all the benefits of victory, if we gain
the victory?

" If we fail, it can be no worse for us. But we shall not feil.
The cause will raise up armies; the cause will create navies. The
people, the people, if we are true to them, will carry us, and will
carry themselves, gloriously, through this struggle. I care not
how fickle other people have been found. I know the people of
these Colonies, and I know that resistance to British aggression is
deep and settled in their hearts and cannot be eradicated. Every
Colony, indeed, has expressed its willingness to follow, if we but
take the lead. Sir, the Declaration will inspire the people with
increased courage. Instead of a long and bloody war for the
restoration of privileges, for redress of grievances, for chartered
immunities, held under a British king, set before them the glorious
object of entire independence, and it will breathe into them anew
the breath of life. Read this Declaration at the head of the
army; every sword will be drawn from its scabbard, and the
solemn vow uttered, to maintain it, or to perish on the bed of
honor. Publish it from the pulpit ; religion will approve it, and
the love of religious liberty will cling round it, resolved to stand
with it, or fall with it. Send it to the public halls ; proclaim it
there ; let them hear it who heard the first roar of the enemy's
cannon ; let them see it who saw their brothers and their sons fall
on the field of Bunker Hill, and in the streets of Lexington and
Concord, and the very walls will cry out in its support.

" Sir, I know the uncertainty of human affairs, but I see, I see
clearly, through this day's business. You and I, indeed, may rue

DANIEL WEBSTER IO9

it We may not live to the time when this Declaration shall be
made good. We may die ; die colonists ; die slaves ; die, it may
be, ignomiDiously and on the scaffold. Be it so. Be it so. If it
be the pleasure of Heaven that my country shall require the poor
offering of my life, the victim shall be ready, at the appointed
hour of sacrifice, come when that hour may. But while I do live,
let me have a country, or at least the hope of a country, and that
a free country.

" But whatever may be our fate, be assured, be assured, that this
Declaration will stand. It may cost treasure, and it may cost blood ;
but it will stand, and it will richly compensate for both. Through
the thick gloom of the present, I see the brightness of the future,
as the sun in heaven. We shall make this a glorious, an immor-
tal day. When we are in our graves, our children will honor it.
They will celebrate it with thanksgiving, with festivity, with bon-
fires, and illuminations. On its annual return they will shed tears,
copious, gushing tears, not of subjection and slavery, not of agony
and distress, but of exultation, of gratitude, and of joy. Sir, before
God, I believe the hour is come. My judgment approves this
measure, and my whole heart is in it. All that I have, and all
that I am, and all that I hope, in this life, I am now ready here to
stake upon it ; and I leave off as I begun, that live or die, survive
or perish, I am for the Declaration. It is my living sentiment,
and by the blessing of God it shall be my dying sentiment, Inde-
pendence, now, and independence for ever."

And so that day shall be honored, illustrious prophet and
patriot ! so that day shall be honored, and as often as it returns,
thy renown shall come along with it, and the glory of thy life,
like the day of thy death, shall not fail from the remembrance of
men.

[From Adams and Jefferson, a discourse in commemoration or the lives and
services of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, dehvered in Faneuil Hallf
Boston, August 2, 1826. Works, vol. i, pp. 133-136.]

LIBERTY AND UNION

Direct collision, therefore, between force and force, is the
unavoidable result of that remedy for the revision of unconstitu-

1 10 AMERICAN PROSE

tional laws which the gentleman contends for. It must happeu in
the very first case to which it is applied. Is not this the plain
result? To resist by force the execution of a law, generally, is
treason. Can the courts of the United States take notice of the
indulgence of a State to commit treason ? The common saying,
that a State cannot commit treason herself, is nothing to the pur-
pose. Can she authorize others to do it? If John Fries had
produced an act of Pennsylvania, annulling the law of Congress,
would it have helped his case ? Talk about it as we will, these
doctrines go the length of revolution. They are incompatible
with any peaceable administration of the government. They lead
directly to disunion and civil commotion; and therefore it is,
that at their commencement, when they are first found to be
maintained by respectable men, and in a tangible form, I enter
my public protest against them all.

The honorable gentleman argues, that if this government be
the sole judge of the extent of its own powers, whether that right
of judging be in Congress or the Supreme Court, it equally 'sub-
verts State sovereignty. This the gentleman sees, or thinks he
sees, although he cannot perceive how the right of judging, in this
matter, if left to the exercise of State legislatures, has any ten-
dency to subvert the government of the Union. The gentleman's
opinion may be, that the right ought not to have been lodged with
the general government ; he may like better such a constitution
as we should have under the right of State interference ; but I
ask him to meet me on the plain matter of fact. I ask him to
meet me on the Constitution itself. I ask him if the power is
not found there, clearly and visibly found there ?

But, Sir, what is this danger, and what the grounds of it? Let
it be remembered, that the Constitution of the United States
is not unalterable. It is to continue in its present form no longer
than the people who established it shall choose to continue it. If
they shall become convinced that they have made an injudicious
or inexpedient partition and distribution of power between the
State governments and the general government, they can alter
that distribution at will.

If anything be found in the national Constitution, either by
original provision or subsequent interpretation, which ought not

DANIEL WEBSTER III

to be in it, the people know how to get rid of it. If any con-
struction, unacceptable to them, be established, so as to become
practicaUy a part of the Constitution, they will amend it, at their
own sovereign pleasure. But while the people choose to maintain
it as it is, while they are satisfied with it, and refuse to change it,
who has given, or who can give, to the State legislatures a right
to alter it, either by interference, construction, or otherwise?
Gentlemen do not seem to recollect that the people have any
power to do any thing for themselves. They imagine there is no
safety for them, any longer than they are under the close guardian-
ship of the State legislatures. Sir, the people have not trusted
their safety, in regard to the general Constitution, to these hands.
They have required other security, and taken other bonds. They
have chosen to trust themselves, first, to the plain words of the
instrument, and to such construction as the government itself, in
doubtful cases, should put on their own powers, under their oaths
of office, and subject to their responsibility to them ; just as the
people of a State trust their own State governments with a similar
power. Secondly, they have reposed their trust in the efficacy of
frequent elections, and in their own power to remove their own
servants and agents whenever they see cause. Thirdly, they have
reposed trust in the judicial power, which, in order that it might
be trustworthy, they have made as respectable, as disinterested,
and as independent as was practicable. Fourthly, they have
seen fit to rely, in case of necessity, or high expediency, on their
known and admitted power to alter or amend the Constitution,
peaceably and quietly, whenever experience shall point out
defects or imperfections. And, finally, the people of the United
States have, at no time, in no way, directly or indirectly, author-
ized any State legislature to construe or interpret their high
instrument of government ; much less, to interfere, by their own
power, to arrest its cotirse and operation.

If, Sir, the people in these respects had done otherwise than
they have done, their constitution could neither have been pre-
served, nor would it have been worth preserving. And if its
plain provisions shall now be disregarded, and these new doctrines
interpolated in it, it will become as feeble and helpless a being as
its enemies, whether early or more recent, could possibly desire.

1 \2 AMERICAN PROSE

It will exist in every State, but as a poor dependent on State per-
mission. It must borrow leave to be ; and will be, no longer
than State pleasure, or State discretion, sees fit to grant the indul-
gence, and to prolong its poor existence.

But, Sir, although there are fears, there are hopes also. The
people have preserved this, their own chosen Constitution, for
forty years, and have seen their happiness, prosperity, and renown
grow with its growth, and strengthen with its strength. They are
now, generally, strongly attached to it. Overthrown by direct
assault, it cannot be ; evaded, undermined, nullified, it will not
be, if we, and those who shall succeed us here, as agents and
representatives of the people, shall conscientiously and vigilantly
discharge the two great branches of our public trust, faithfully
to preserve, and wisely to administer it.

Mr. President, I have thus stated the reasons of my dissent to
the doctrines which have been advanced and maintained. I am
conscious of having detained you and the Senate much too long.
I was drawn into the debate with no previous deliberation, such as
is suited to the discussion of so grave and important a subject.
But it is a subject of which my heart is full, and I have not been
willing to suppress the utterance of its spontaneous sentiments. I
cannot, even now, persuade myself to relinquish it, without ex-
pressing once more my deep conviction, that, since it respects
nothing less than the Union of the States, it is of most vital and
essential importance to the public happiness. I profess, Sir, in
my career hitherto, to have kept steadily in view the prosperity
and honor of the whole country, and the preservation of our
Federal Union. It is to that Union we owe our safety at home,
and our consideration and dignity abroad. It is to that Union
that we are chiefly indebted for whatever makes us most proud of
our country. That Union we reached only by the discipline of
our virtues in the severe school of adversity. It had its origin in
the necessities of disordered finance, prostrate commerce, and
ruined credit. Under its benign influences, these great interests
immediately awoke, as from the dead, and sprang forth with new-
ness of life. Every year of its duration has teemed with fresh
proofs of its utility and its blessings ; and, although our territory
has stretched out wider and wider, and our population spread

DANIEL WEBSTER II3

farther and farther, they have not outrun its protection or its
benefits. It has been to us all a copious fountain of national,
social, and personal happiness.

I have not allowed myself, Sir, to look beyond the Union,
to see what might lie hidden in the dark recess behind. I
have not coolly weighed the chances of preserving liberty
when the bonds that unite us together shall be broken asun-
der. I have not accustomed myself to hang over the precipice
of disunion, to see whether, with my short sight, I can fathom
the depth of the abyss below ; nor could I regard him as a
safe counsellor in the affairs of this government, whose thoughts
should be mainly bent on considering, not how the Union may
be best preserved, but how tolerable might be the condition of
the people when it should be broken up and destroyed. While the
Union lasts, we have high, exciting, gratifying prospects spread
out before us, for us and our children. Beyond that I seek not
to penetrate the veil. God grant that in my day, at least, that
curtain may not rise ! God grant that on my vision never may be
opened what lies behind ! When my eyes shall be turned to be-
hold for the last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him
shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious
Union ; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent ; on a land
rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood !
Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the
gorgeous ensign of the republic, now known and honored
throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and
trophies streaming in their original lustre, .not a stripe erased or
polluted, nor a single star obscured, bearing for its motto, no such
miserable interrogatory as "What is all this worth?*' nor those
other words of delusion and folly, " Liberty first and Union after-
wards ; " but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living
light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and
over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that
other sentiment, dear to every true American heart. Liberty and
Union, now and for ever, one and inseparable !

[From Second Speech on Foofs Resolution^ commonly known as the " Re-
ply to Hayne," delivered in the Senate of the United States on Jan. 26, 1830
Works^ vol. iii, pp. 33^342.]
I

1 14 AMERICAN PROSE

THE DRUM-BEAT OF ENGLAND

The Senate regarded this interposition as an encroachment bj
the executive on other branches of the government ; as an inter-
ference with the legislative disposition of the public treasure. It
was strongly and forcibly urged, yesterday, by the honorable
member from South Carolina, that the true and only mode of
preserving any balance of power, in mixed governments, is to
keep an exact balance. This is very true, and to this end en-
croachment must be resisted at the first step. The question is,
therefore, whether, upon the true principles of the Constitution,
this exercise of power by the President can be justified. Whether
the consequence be prejudicial or not, if there be an illegal exer-
cise of power, it is to be resisted in the proper manner. Even
if no harm or inconvenience result fi'om transgressing the boun-
dary, the intrusion is not to be suffered to pass unnoticed. Every
encroachment, great or small, is important enough to awaken the
attention of those who are intrusted with the preservation of
a constitutional government. We are not to wait till great public
mischiefs come, till the government is overthrown, or liberty itself
put into extreme jeopardy. We should not be worthy sons of our
fathers were we so to regard great questions affecting the general
freedom. Those fathers accomplished the Revolution on a strict
question of principle. The Parliament of Great Britain asserted
a right to tax the Colonies in all cases whatsoever ; and it was
precisely on this question that they made the Revolution turn.
The amount of taxation was trifiing, but the claim itself was incon-
sistent with liberty ; and that was, in their eyes, enough. It was
against the recital of an act of Parliament, rather than against any
suffering under its enactments, that they took up arms. They
went to war against a preamble. They fought seven years against
a declaration. They poured out their treasures and their blood
like water, in a contest against an assertion which those less saga-
cious and not so well schooled in the principles of civil liberty
would have regarded as barren phraseology, or mere parade
of words. They saw in the claim of the British Parliament a
seminal principle of mischief, the germ of unjust power; they

•';

DANIEL WEBSTER II5

detected it, dragged it forth from underneath its plausible dis-
guises, struck at it ; nor did it elude either their steady eye or
their well-directed blow till they had extirpated and destroyed it,
to the smallest fibre. On this question of principle, while actual
suffering was yet afar off, they raised their flag against a power, to
which, for purposes of foreign conquest and subjugation, Rome,
in the height of her glory, is not to be compared ; a power which
has dotted over the surface of the whole globe with her posses-
sions and military posts, whose morning drum-beat, following the
sun, and keeping company with the hours, circles the earth with
one continuous and unbroken strain of the martial airs of England.

[From The Presidential Protest a speech delivered in the Senate of the
United States, May 7, 1834. Works^ vol. iv, pp. 109, no.]

AMERICAN INTEREST IN REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT

The undersigned will first observe, that the President is per-
suaded his Majesty the Emperor of Austria does not think that
the government of the United States ought to view with uncon-
cern the extraordinary events which have occurred, not only in
his dominions, but in many other parts of Europe, since February,
1848. The government and people of the United States, like
other intelligent governments and communities, take a lively
interest in the movements and the events of this remarkable age,
in whatever part of the world they may be exhibited. But the
interest taken by the United States in those events has not pro-
ceeded from any disposition to depart from that neutrality toward
foreign powers, which is among the deepest principles and the
most cherished traditions of the political history of the Union.
It has been the necessary effect of the unexampled character of
the events themselves, which could not fail to arrest the attention
of the contemporary world, as they will doubtless fill a memorable
page in history.

But the undersigned goes further, and freely admits that, in
proportion as these extraordinary events appeared to have their
origin in those great ideas of responsible and popular government,
on which the American constitutions themselves are wholly

1 1 6 AMERICAN PROSE

founded, they could not but command the warm sympathy ol
the people of this country. Well-known circumstances in their
history, indeed their whole history, have made them the repre-
sentatives of purely popular principles of government. In this
light they now stand before the world. They could not, if they
would, conceal their character, their condition, or their destiny.
They could not, if they so desired, shut out from the view of man-
kind the causes which have placed them, in so short a national
career, in the station which they now hold among the civilized
states of the world. They could not, if they desired it, suppress
either the thoughts or the hopes which arise in men's minds, in
other countries, from contemplating their successful example of
free government. That very intelligent and distinguished person-
age, the Emperor Joseph the Second, was among the first to
discern this necessary consequence of the American Revolution
on the sentiments and opinions of the people of Europe. In
a letter to his minister in the Netherlands in 1787, he observes,
that " it is remarkable that France, by the assistance which she
afforded to the Americans, gave birth to reflections on free-
dom." This fact, which the sagacity of that monarch perceived
at so early a day, is now known and admitted by intelligent
powers all over the world. True, indeed, it is, that the preva-
lence on the other continent of sentiments favorable to republican
liberty is the result of the reaction of America upon Europe ; and
the source and centre of this reaction has doubtless been, and
now is, in these United States.

The position thus belonging to the United States is a feet as
inseparable from their history, their constitutional organization,
and their character, as the opposite position of the powers com-
posing the European alliance is from the history and constitutional
organization of the government of those powers. The sovereigns
who form that alliance have not unfrequently felt it their right to
interfere with the political movements of foreign states ; and have,
in their manifestoes and declarations, denounced the popular ideas
of the age in terms so comprehensive as of necessity to include
the United States, and their forms of government. It is well
known that one of the leading principles announced by the allied sov-
ereigns, after the restoration of the Bourbons, is, that all popular

DANIEL WEBSTER \\^

or constitutional rights are holden no otherwise than as grants and
indulgences from crowned heads. " Useful and necessary changes
in legislation and administration," says the Laybach Circular of
May, 1 82 1, "ought only to emanate from the free will and intelli-
gent conviction of those whom God has rendered responsible for
power ; all that deviates from this line necessarily leads to disorder,
commotions, and evils far more insufferable than those which they
pretend to remedy." And his late Austrian Majesty, Francis the
First, is reported to have declared, in an address to the Hun-
garian Diet, in 1820, that "the whole world had become foolish,
and, leaving their ancient laws, were in search of imaginary consti-
tutions." These declarations amount to nothing less than a denial
of the lawfulness of the origin of the government of the United
States, since it is certain that that government was established in
consequence of a change which did not proceed from thrones, or
the permission of crowned heads. But the government of the
United States heard these denunciations of its fundamental princi-
ples without remonstrance, or the disturbance of its equanimity.
This was thirty years ago.

The power of this republic, at the present moment, is spread
over a region one of the richest and most fertile on the globe, and
of an extent in comparison with which the possessions of the house
of Hapsburg are but as a patch on the earth's surface. Its popu-
lation, already twenty-five millions, will exceed that of the Austrian
empire within the period during which it may be hoped that Mr.
Hiilsemann may yet remain in the honorable discharge of his
duties to his government. Its navigation and commerce are
hardly exceeded by the oldest and most commercial nations ; its
maritime means and its maritime power may be seen by Austria
herself, in all seas where she has ports, as well as they may be
seen, also, in all other quarters of the globe. Life, liberty, prop-
erty, and all personal rights, are amply secured to all citizens, and
protected by just and stable laws ; and credit, public and private,
is as well established as in any government of Continental Europe ;
and the country, in all its interests and concerns, partakes most
largely in all the improvements and progress which distinguish the
age. Certainly, the United States may be pardoned, even by those
who profess adherence to the principle of absolute government, if

Il8 AMERICAN PROSE

they entertain an ardent affection for those popular forms of politi-
cal organization which have so rapidly advanced their own pros-
perity and happiness, and enabled them, in so short a period, to
bring their country, and the hemisphere to which it belongs, to the
notice and respectful regard, not to say the admiration, of the
civilized world. Nevertheless, the United States have abstained, at
all times, from acts of interference with the political changes of
Europe. They cannot, however, fail to cherish always a lively inter-
est in the fortunes of nations struggling for institutions like their own.
But this sympathy, so far from being necessarily a hostile feeling
toward any of the parties to these great national struggles, is quite
consistent with amicable relations with them all. The Hungarian
people are three or four times as numerous as the inhabitants of
these United States were when the American Revolution broke
out. They possess, in a distinct language, and in other respects,
important elements of a separate nationality, which the Anglo-
Saxon race in this country did not possess; and if the United
States wish success to countries contending for popular constitu-
tions and national independence, it is only because they regard
such constitutions and such national independence, not as imagi-
nary, but as real blessings. They claim no right, however, to take
part in the struggles of foreign powers in order to promote these
ends. It is only in defence of his own government, and its prin-
ciples and character, that the undersigned has now expressed
himself on this subject. But when the people of the United States
behold the people of foreign countries, without any such interfer-
ence, spontaneously moving toward the adoption of institutions
like their own, it surely cannot be expected of them to remain
wholly indifferent spectators.

[From a letter addressed, as Secretary of State, Dec. 21, 1850, to the
Chevalier Hiilsemann, Charge d' Affaires of the Emperor of Austria. Works,
vol. vi, pp. 494-497-]

WASHINGTON IRVING

[Washington Irving was born in New York City, April 3, 1 783, and died at
Tarrytown, N.Y., Nov. 28, 1859. Irving spent his early years in New York
City. In 1804 he went abroad for his health, travelling in France, Italy, and
England. Returning in 1806, he resumed the study of law and was admitted
to the bar, but did not practise his profession. In 1 81 5 he went abroad again
and passed five years in England, six years in travelling on the continent, and
three years in Spain. In 1829 he was appointed Secretary of Legation at the
Court of St. James, and remained in England until 1832, when he returned to
New York. From 1842 to 1846 he was minister to Spain. The rest of his
life was happily spent in New York and at Sunnyside, his little place on the
banks of the Hudson at Tarrytown.

In 1802 Irving contributed to the Morning Chronicle a series of letters,
signed Jonathan Oldstyle, in the manner of the Taller and Spectator. In 1807
be joined his brother and Paulding in the production of Salmagundi^ a semi-
monthly publication, also modelled on the Spectator and its followers. In 1809
appeared the satirical History of New York^ but it was not until ten years
later that reverses of fortune determined Irving to choose the profession of
literature. The Sketch-Book (1819-20) achieved a remarkable success both
at home and abroad. It was followed by Bracebridge Hall (1822), Tales of
a Traveller (1824), and, as fruits of his first residence in Spain, Life and
Voyages of Columbus (1828), The Conquest of Granada (1829), and The
Alhambra (1832). During the ten years that elapsed before he went to Spain
for the second time, he published Crayon Miscellanies (iS^$)f Astoria (1836),
and Adventures of Captain Bonneville (1837). ^^^ later works were largely
biographical and historical: Oliver Goldsmith (1849), Mahomet and his Suc-
cessors {i^/^^),. Wolf erf s Roost (1855), and Life of Washington (1855-59).
With great generosity he abandoned to Prescott his life-long project of writing
the history of the conquest of Mexico.

The text of the extracts from Irving is, with the permission of G. P. Put-
nam's Sons, the publishers, that of the author's revised edition.]

It is a strange fact that the English language has no exact word
for a thing frequent in English literature, one which we are forced
to call by an inadequate and inaccurate French phrase — vers de
societSy a kind of poetry more abundantly cultivated in Great
Britain and the United States than in France. Mr. Austin Dob-
son has proposed to adopt Cowper's suggestion, yaw/7/^r verse ^
but this is perhaps not comprehensive enough. The late Frederick

119

I20 AMERICAN PROSE

Locker- Lampson, selecting the most successful poems of this kind,
entitled his enchanting anthology Lyra Elegantiarutn, But what-
ever the name we bestow upon it, the thing itself is readily to
be recognized ; it is verse such as Pope often wrote, and Prior,
and Praed, such as Holmes delighted us with in our own day,
and Mr. Locker-Lampson, and Mr. Austin Dobson. It is the
poetry of the man of the world, who has a heart, no doubt, but
who does not wear it on his sleeve ; it is brief and brilliant and
buoyant ; and it is in verse almost the exact equivalent of the
prose essay of Steele and Addison.

A comparison of the Lyra Elegantiarutn of Mr. Locker-Lamp-
son with an equally skilfully edited volume, the Eighteenth Cen-
tury Essays of Mr. Austin Dobson, reveals the fact that the prose
form which we are forced to call the eighteenth century essay is a
liter a.ry genre quite as distinct as the verse form which we are forced
to call vers de societe. Neither form has yet a name of its own, but
each has an independent existence. Essay is a word of wide
meaning ; it may include a mere medley of pithy reflections by
Montaigne or Bacon or Emerson, and it may designate also an
elaborate exhibition of quaint humor by Lamb, or an ebulli-
tion of pungent wit by Lowell. The eighteenth century essay,
as Steele devised it and as Addison improved it, owed some-
thing to Walton's Conversations, something to La Bruy^re's
Characters, and something to Horace's Epistles^ but despite these
predecessors, the papers of the Tatler and the Spectator were
essentially original in form. No one had ever before sketched
men and manners from just that point of view, and ^th just that
easy touch. What Steele and Addison had done spontaneously
and naturally, many another writer coming after them laboriously
reproduced, taking their papers as his pattern, and imitating his
model as closely as he could. Dr. Johnson, for example, toiled
mightily to repeat the success of the Spectator, and failed lament-
ably ; as Goldsmith suggested, Johnson could not help making
little fishes talk like whales. Goldsmith himself was the sole heir
of Steele and Addison ; and in his hands the eighteenth century
essay was as free, as graceful, and as natural as in theirs.

Irving is often accused of being a mere copyist of Goldsmith.
The charge is unjust and absurd. Irving was no more an imitator

WASHINGTON IRVING 121

of Goldsmith than Goldsmith was an imUator of Steele and Addi-
son. He had a kindred talent with theirs and he was the heir of
their tradition. The eighteenth century essay was the form in which
he expressed himself most easily ; and for him to have sought
another mode would have been to thwart his natural inclination.
He is the nineteenth century writer who has possessed most of the
qualities that must combine to give the eighteenth century essay
its essential charm ; and he is the only nineteenth century writer
who found in the eighteenth century essay a form wholly satis-
factory and exactly suited to his own development. The sketches
of Geoffrey Crayon are as inevitable a revelation of the author as
are the lucubrations of Isaac Bickerstaff or the Chinese letters of
the Citizen of the World, and they show " that happy mingling of
the lively and severe, which Johnson envied but could not emulate "
-^ to quote from Mr. Austin Dobson. " That charm of simplicity
and grace, of kindliness and gentle humor, which," so Mr. Dobson
tells us in another place, "we recognize as Goldsmith's special
property," seems somehow to have passed by inheritance to Irving
as next of kin.

The eighteenth century essay is a definite form — but it con-
tained also the beginnings of several other forms. It is not fan-
tastic to find in the Spectator the precursor of the modern magazine,
with its varied table of contents, since we can pick out from its
pages not only the brisk disquisition upon the topics of the time,
but also the character sketch, the short story, the theatrical criti-
cism, the book-review, the obituary notice, and even the serial
story, — for what else is the succession of papers in which Sir
Roger de Coverley appears and reappears? Midway between
the modern magazine and the Spectator stands the Sketch-Book :
and the first of the eight numbers in which it was originally issued
had ample variety, containing, as they did, papers as dissimilar as the
Author's Account of Himself ^ the Voyage ^ the essay on Roscoe, the
two tales of the Wife and Rip Van Winkle, and the still unheeded
warning to English Writers on America,

For nothing is the American magazine now more noted than for
its short stories, and one of the tales in the first number of the
Sketch' Book has been the parent of an innumerable progeny. Rip
Van Winkle is not only one of the best short stories in our Ian-

122 AMERICAN PROSE

guage ; it is also the earl\pst attempt in America at local fiction.
Rip Van Winkle and the Legend of Sleepy Hollow (both contained
in the Sketch- Book, issued in 1819-20) showed how the realities
of our life here could best be made available in romance. In these
stories Irving set an example to the New England group of story-
tellers and to the later men and women who have since explained
to us also the South and the West by frank and direct tales of
the way people live in the one section and the other. Irving was
first in the field now cultivated so carefully by Miss Jewett and
Miss Wilkins, by Mr. Cable, Mr. Harris, and Mr. Page, by Mr.
Garland and Mr. Wistar.

On other authors also has Irving's influence made itself felt, —
on Dickens, for one, as may be detected at once by a comparison
of the Dingley Dell chapters of the Pickwick Papers ^ with the cor-
responding humorously realistic pages of the Sketch-Book and
Bracebridge Hall; and for another, on Longfellow, who came
under the pensive and romantic charm of Irving's earlier writ-
ings, and who took Irving's prose as the model of his own in Outre
Mer and Kavanagh, Hawthorne also and Poe followed in Irving's
footsteps, and their short stories often disclose their indebtedness
to him. Scott appreciated highly all that Irving wrote, and more
especially the tales in which the eerie was adroitly fiised with the
ironic ; and in his paper On the Supernatural in Fictitious Com-
position he praised the ludicrous sketch of The Bold Dragoon as
the only instance of the fantastic then to be found in the English
language. The one story of this sort that Scott himself wrote.
Wandering Willie^ s Tale (introduced into Redgauntlet)^ appeared
about the same time as the Tales of a Traveller^ and later there-
fore than Irving's ghostly stories. " At any rate," Irving wrote to
a friend, " I have the merit of adopting a line for myself, instead
of following others."

Perhaps there is no better test of originality and power than
this, — that an author's influence upon his fellow-craftsmen shall
both broaden and endure. In the variegated garden of American
story-telling "all can grow the flower now, for all have got the
seed " ; but it was Irving who showed how the soil should be culti-
vated and who brought the first blooms to perfection. His art
seems so simple, his attitude is so modest, the man himself is so

:.^

WASHINGTON IRVING 1 23

unpretending and unaffected, that he has not yet received full
credit for his very real originality. And not only in literature does
his influence abide, but in the life of the city he was bom in. It
was Irving who invented the Knickerbocker legend and who im-
posed it upon us, " making it out of whole cloth," as the phrase is,
— weaving it in the loom of his own playful imagination. It was
Irving again who flung the entrancing veil of romance over the
banks of the Hudson. To the end of time will the Catskills be
Rip Van Winkle's country, and New York the town of the Knicker-
bockers.

It is not by his elaborately wrought biographies that Irving is to
survive, not by the lives of Columbus and of Washington, admir*
able as these are, but by the earlier miscellanies, developed, all of
them, out of the eighteenth century essay, — the Sketch-Booky
Bracebridge Hall, the Tales of a Traveller^ and the Alhambra
(that Spanish "Sketch-Book," as Prescott aptly called it). It is
in these that Irving is most at home ; in these he is doing the work
he did best; and in these his style is seen at its finest. If the
style is the man, then is Irving transparently revealed in these
volumes, for his writing had always the simplicity and the sincerity
of his own character. But though it may seem careless, it has
more art than the casual reader may suspect. It has the rare
merit of combining vivacity and repose. As Poe pointed out,
Irving's style is excellent even though his diction is not always
impeccable ; and we remember that Addison also has been the
prey of the rigid grammarians who think that man was made for
syntax. The happy phrase is frequent in Irving's sketches, and
the felicitous adjective abounds; — yet we have to admit that his
leisurely and old-fashioned paragraphs do not appeal to those who
fail to find beauty anywhere but in the verbal mosaics of certain
latterday stylists. Irving's pages are wholesome always ; they are
as genuine as they are graceful, as natural as they are charming ;
and perhaps they are most relished by those who best know the
kindred qualities of Steele and of Goldsmith,

Brander Matthews

124 AMERICAN PROSE

WOUTER VAN TWILLER

OF THE RENOWNED WOUTER VAN TWILLER, HIS UNPARALLELED
VIRTUES — AS LIKEWISE HIS UNUTTERABLE WISDOM IN THE LAW-
CASE OF WANDLE SCHOONHOVEN AND BARENT BLEECKER — AND
THE GREAT ADMIRATION OF THE PUBLIC THEREAT

Grievous and very much to be commiserated is the task of the
feeling historian, who writes the history of his native land. If it
fall to his lot to be the recorder of calamity or crime, the mourn-
ful page is watered with his tears; nor can he recall the most
prosperous and blissful era, without a melancholy sigh at the
reflection that it has passed away forever ! I know not whether
it be owing to an immoderate love for the simplicity of former
times, or to that certain tenderness of heart incident to all senti-
mental historians ; but I candidly confess that \ cannot look back
on the happier days of our city, which I now' describe, without
great dejection of spirit. With faltering hand do I withdraw the
curtain of oblivion, that veils the modest merit of our venerable
ancestors, and as their figures rise to my mental vision, humble
myself before their mighty shades.

Such are my feelings when I revisit the family mansion of the
Knickerbockers, and spend a lonely hour in the chamber where
hang the portraits of my forefathers, shrouded in dust, like the
forms they represent. With pious reverence do I gaze on the
countenances of those renowned burghers, who have preceded me
in the steady march of existence, — whose sober and temperate
blood now meanders through my veins, flowing slower and slower
in its feeble conduits, until its current shall soon be stopped for-
ever !

These, I say to myself, are but frail memorials of the mighty
men who flourished in the days of the patriarchs ; but who, alas,
have long since mouldered in that tomb towards which my steps
are insensibly and irresistibly hastening ! As I pace the darkened
chamber and lose myself in melancholy musings, the shadowy
images around me almost seem to steal once more into existence,
— their countenances to assume the animation of life, — their eyes
to pursue me in every movement ! Carried away by the delusions

WASHINGTON IRVING 12$

of fancy, I almost imagine myself surrounded by the shades of the
departed, and holding sweet converse with the worthies of antiq-
uity ! Ah, hapless Diedrich ! bom in a degenerate age, aban-
doned to the buffetings of fortunes, — a stranger and a weary
pilgrim in thy native land, — blest with no weeping wife, nor
family of helpless children, but doomed to wander neglected
through those crowded streets, and elbowed by foreign upstarts
from those fair abodes where once thine ancestors held sover-
eign empire !

Let me not, however, lose the historian in the man, nor suffer
the doting recollections of age to overcome me, while dwelling
with fond garrulity on the virtuous days of the patriarchs, — on
those sweet days of simplicity and ease, which nevermore will
dawn on the lovely island of Mannahata.

These melancholy reflections have been forced from me by the
growing wealth and importance of New Amsterdam, which, I
plainly perceive, are to involve it in all kinds of perils and dis-
asters. Already, as I observed at the close of my last book, they
had awakened the attentions of the .mother-country. The usual
mark of protection shown by mother- countries to wealthy colonies
was forthwith manifested ; a governor being sent out to rule over
the province, and squeeze out of it as much revenue as possible.
The arrival of a governor of course put an end to the protectorate
of Oloffe the Dreamer. He appears, however, to have dreamt to
some purpose during his sway, as we find him afterv/ards living as
a patroon on a great landed estate on the banks of the Hudson ;
having virtually forfeited all right to his ancient appellation of
Kortlandt or Lackland.

It was in the year of our Lord 1629 that Mynheer Wouter Van
Twiller was appointed governor of the province of Nieuw Neder-
landts, under the commission and control of their High Might-
inesses the Lords States General of the United Netherlands, and
the privileged West India Company.

This renowned old gentleman arrived at New Amsterdam in the
merry month of June, the sweetest month in all the year ; when
dan Apollo seems to dance up the transparent firmament, — when
the robin, the thrush, and a thousand other wanton songsters, make
the woods to resound with amorous ditties, and the luxurious little

126 AMERICAN PROSE

boblincon revels among the clover blossoms of the meadows, — all
which happy coincidence persuaded the old dames of New Amster-
dam, who were skilled in the art of foretelling events, that this was
to be a happy and prosperous administration.

The renowned Wouter (or Walter) Van Twiller was descended
from a long line of Dutch burgomasters, who had successively
dozed away" their lives, and grown fat upon the bench of magistracy
in Rotterdam ; and who had comported themselves with such
singular wisdom and propriety, that they were never either heard
or talked of — which, next to being universally applauded, should
be the object of ambition of all magistrates and rulers. There are
two opposite ways by which some men make a figure in the world :
one, by talking faster than they think, and the other, by holding
their tongues and not thinking at all. By the first, many a smat-
terer acquires the reputation of a man of quick parts ; by the
other, many a dunderpate, like the owl, the stupidest of birds,
comes to be considered the very type of wisdom. This, by the
way, is a casual remark, which I would not, for the universe, have
it thought I apply to Governor Van Twiller. It is true he was a
man shut up within himself, like an oyster, and rarely spoke, except
in monosyllables ; but then it was allowed he seldom said a foolish
thing. So invincible was his gravity that he was never known to
laugh or even to smile through the whole course of a long and
prosperous life. Nay, if a joke were uttered in his presence, that
set light-minded hearers in a roar, it was observed to throw him
into a state of perplexity. Sometimes he would deign to inquire
into the matter, and when, after much explanation, the joke was
made as plain as a pikestaff, he would continue to smoke his pipe
in silence, and at length, knocking out the ashes, would exclaim,
" Well ! I see nothing in all that to laugh about."

With all his reflective habits, he never made up his mind on
a subject. His adherents accounted for this by the astonishing
magnitude of his ideas. He conceived every subject on so grand
a scale that he had not room in his head to turn it oyer and
examine both sides of it. Certain it is, that if any matter were
propounded to him on which ordinary mortals would rashly
determine at first glance, he would put on a vague, mysterious look,
shake his capacious head, smoke some time in profound silence,

WASHINGTON IRVING 1 27

and at length observe, that *' he had his doubts about the matter ; "
which gained him the reputation of a man slow of belief and not
easily imposed upon. What is more, it gained him a lasting name ;
for to this habit of mind has been attributed his surname Twiller ;
which is said to be a corruption of the original Twijfler, or, in
plain English, Doubter,

The person of this illustrious old gentleman was formed and
proportioned, as though it had been moulded by the hands of
some cunning Dutch statuary, as a model of majesty and lordly
grandeur. He was exactly five feet six inches in height, and six
feet five inches in circumference. His head was a perfect sphere,
and of such stupendous dimensions, that dame Nature, with all her
sex*s ingenuity, would have been puzzled to construct a neck
capable of supporting it ; wherefore she wisely declined the
attempt, and settled it firmly on the top of his backbone, just
between the shoulders. His body was oblong and particularly
capacious at bottotn ; which was wisely ordered by Providence,
seeing that he was a man of sedentary habits, and very averse to
the idle labor of walking. His legs were short, but sturdy in
proportion to the weight they had to sustain ; so that when erect
he had not a little the appearance of a beer-barrel on skids. His
face, that infallible index of the mind, presented a vast expanse,
unfurrowed by any of those lines and angles which disfigure the
human countenance with what is termed expression. Two small
grey eyes twinkled feebly in the midst, like two stars of lesser
magnitude in a hazy firmament ; and his full-fed cheeks, which
seemed to have taken toll of everything that went into his mouth,
were curiously mottled and streaked with dusky red, like a spitz-
enberg apple.

His habits were as regular as his person. He daily took his
four stated meals, appropriating exactly an hour to each ; he
smoked and doubted eight hours, and he slept the remaining
twelve of the four-and- twenty. Such was the renowned Wouter
Van Twiller, — a true philosopher, for his mind was either ele-
vated above, or tranquilly settled below, the cares and perplexities of
this world. He had lived in it for years, without feeling the least
curiosity to know whether the sun revolved round it, or it round
the sun; and he had watched, for at least half a century, the

128 AMERICAN PROSE

smoke curling from his pipe to the ceiling, without once troubling
his head with any of those numerous theories by which a philoso-
pher would have perplexed his brain, in accounting for its rising
above the surrounding atmosphere.

In his council he presided with great state and solemnity. He
sat in a huge chair of solid oak, hewn in the celebrated forest of
the Hague, fabricated by an experienced timmerman of Amster-
dam, and curiously carved about the arms and feet, into exact
imitations of gigantic eagle's claws. Instead of a sceptre, he
swayed a long Turkish pipe, wrought with jasmin and amber,
which had been presented to a stadtholder of Holland at the con-
clusion of a treaty with one of the petty Barbary powers. In this
stately chair would he sit, and this magnificent pipe would he
smoke, shaking his right knee with a constant motion, and fixing
his eye for hours together upon a little print of Amsterdam, which
hung in a black frame against the opposite wall of the council-
chamber. Nay, it has even been said, that when any deliberation
of extraordinary length and intricacy was on the carpet, the re-
nowned Wouter would shut his eyes for full two hours at a time,
that he might not be disturbed by external objects ; and at such
times the internal commotion of his mind was evinced by certain
regular guttural sounds, which his admirers declared were merely
the noise of conflict, made by his contending doubts and opinions.

It is with infinite difficulty I have been enabled to collect these
biographical anecdotes of the great man under consideration.
The facts respecting him were so scattered and vague, and divers
of them so questionable in point of authenticity, that I have had
to give up the search after many, and decline the admission of
still more, which would have tended to heighten the coloring of
his portrait.

I have been the more anxious to delineate fully the person and
habits of Wouter Van Twiller, from the consideration that he was
not only the first, but also the best governor that ever presided
over this ancient and respectable province ; and so tranquil and
benevolent was his reign, that I do not find throughout the whole
of it a single instance of any offender being brought to punish-
ment, — a most indubitable sign of a merciful governor, and a case
unparalleled, excepting in the reign of the illustrious King Log,

WASHINGTON IRVING 1 29

from whom, it is hinted, the renowned Van Twiller was a lineal
descendant.

The very outset of the career of this excellent magistrate was
distinguished by an example of legal acumen, that gave flattering
presage of a wise and equitable administration. The morning
after he had been installed in office, and the moment that he was
making his breakfast from a prodigious earthen dish, filled with
milk and Indian pudding, he was interrupted by the appearance of
Wandle Schoonhoven, a very important old burgher of New
Amsterdam, who complained bitterly of one Barent Bleecker,
inasmuch as he refused to come to a settlement of accounts,
seeing that there was a heavy balance in favor of the said Wandle.
Governor Van Twiller, as I have already observed, was a man of
few words ; he was likewise a mortal enemy to multiplying writ-
ings — or being disturbed at his breakfast. Having listened at-
tentively to the statement of Wandle Schoonhoven, giving an
occasional grunt, as he shovelled a spoonful of Indian pudding
into his mouth, — either as a sign that he relished the dish, or
comprehended the story, — he called unto him his constable, and
pulling out of his breeches-pocket a huge jack-knife, dispatched
it after the defendant as a summons, accompanied by his tobacco-
box as a warrant.

This summary process was as effectual in those simple days as
was the seal-ring of the great Haroun Alraschid among the true
believers. The two parties being confronted before him, each
produced a book of accounts, written in a language and character
that would have puzzled any but a High-Dutch commentator, or
a learned decipherer of Egyptian obelisks. The sage Wouter took
them one after the other, and having poised them in his hands, and
attentively counted over the number of leaves, fell straightway into
a very great doubt, and smoked for half an hour without saying a
word ; at length, laying his finger beside his nose, and shutting his
eyes for a moment, with the air of a man who has just caught a
subtle idea by the tail, he slowly took his pipe from his mouth,
puffed forth a column of tobacco-smoke, and with marvellous
gravity and solemnity pronounced, that, having carefully counted
over the leaves and weighed the books, it was found, that one was
just as thick and as heavy as the other : therefore, it was the final

I30 AMERICAN PROSE

opinion of the court that the accounts were equally balanced:
therefore, Wandle should give Barent a receipt, and Barent should
give Wandle a receipt, and the constable should pay the costs.

This decision, being straightway made known, diffused general
joy throughout New Amsterdam, for the people immediately per-
ceived that they had a very wise and equitable magistrate to rule
over them. But its happiest effect was, that not another lawsuit
took place throughout the whole of his administration ; and the
office of constable fell into such decay, that there was not one of
those losel scouts known in the province for many years. I am
the more particular in dwelling on this transaction, not only be-
cause I deem it one of the most sage and righteous judgments on
record, and well worthy the attention of modern magistrates, but
because it was a miraculous event in the history of the renowned
Wouter, — being the only time he was ever known to come to a
decision in the whole course of his life.

[From A History of New York^ from the beginning of the world to the end
of the Dutch dynasty ; containing^ among many surprising and curious mat-
ters, the unutterable panderings of Walter the Doubter, the disastrous projects
of William the Testy, and the chivalric achievements of Peter the Headstrong;
the three Dutch governors of New Amsterdam ; being the only authentic his-
tory of the times that ever hath been or ever will be published. By Diedrich
Knickerbocker. 1809. Book iii, chapter i.]

RIP VAN WINKLE

In a long ramble of the kind on a fine autumnal day, Rip had
unconsciously scrambled to one of the highest parts of the Kaats-
kill mountains. He was after his favorite sport of squirrel shoot-
ing, and the still solitudes had echoed and re-echoed with the
reports of his gun. Panting and fatigued, he threw himself, late
in the afternoon, on a green knoll, covered with mountain herbage,
that crowned the brow of a precipice. From an opening between
the trees he could overlook all the lower country for many a mile
of rich woodland. He saw at a distance the lordly Hudson, far,
far below him, moving on its silent but majestic course, with the
reflection of a purple cloud, or the sail of a lagging bark, here

WASHINGTON IRVING 13I

and there sleeping on its glassy bosom, and at last losing itself in
the blue highlands.

On the other side he looked down into a deep mountain glen,
wild, lonely, and shagged, the bottom filled with fragments from
the impending cliffs, and scarcely lighted by the reflected rays of
the setting sun. For some time Rip lay musing on this scene ;
evening was gradually advancing ; the mountains began to throw
their long blue shadows over the valleys ; he saw that it would be
dark long before he could reach the village, and he heaved a heavy
sigh when he thought of encountering the terrors of Dame Van
Winkle.

As he was about to descend, he heard a voice from a distance,
hallooing, " Rip Van Winkle ! Rip Van Winkle ! " He looked
round, but could see nothing but a crow winging its solitary flight
across the mountain. He thought his fancy must have deceived
him, and turned again to descend, when he heard the same cry
ring through the still evening air ; " Rip Van Winkle 1 Rip Van
Winkle ! " — at the same time Wolf bristled up his back, and giv-
ing a low growl, skulked to his master's side, looking fearfully down
into the glen. Rip now felt a vague apprehension stealing over
him ; he looked anxiously in the same direction, and perceived a
strange figure slowly toiling up the rocks, and bending under the
weight of something he carried on his back. He was surprised
to see any human being in this lonely and unfrequented place, but
supposing it to be some one of the neighborhood in need of his
assistance, he hastened down to yield it.

On nearer approach he was still more surprised at the singularity
of the stranger's appearance. He was a short square-built old
fellow, with thick bushy hair, and a grizzled beard. His dress was
of the antique Dutch fashion — a cloth jerkin strapped round the
waist — several pair of breeches, the outer one of ample volume,
decorated with rows of buttons down the sides, and bunches at
the knees. He bore on his shoulder a stout keg, that seemed full
of liquor, and made signs for Rip to approach and assist him with
the load. Though rather shy and distrustful of this new acquaint-
ance. Rip complied with his usual alacrity ; and mutually reliev-
ing one another, they clambered up a narrow gully, apparently the
dry bed of a mountain torrent. As they ascended. Rip every now

132 AMERICAN PROSE

and then heard long rolling peals, like distant thunder, that seemed
to issue out of a deep ravine, or rather cleft, between lofty rocks,
toward which their rugged path conducted. He paused for an
instant, but supposing it to be the muttering of one of those tran-
sient thunder-showers which often take place in mountain heights,
he proceeded. Passing through the ravine, they came to a hollow,
like a small amphitheatre, surrounded by perpendicular precipices,
over the brinks of which impending trees shot their branches, so
that you only caught glimpses of the azure sky and the bright
evening cloud. During the whole time Rip and his companion
had labored on in silence ; for though the former marvelled greatly
what could be the object of carrying a keg of liquor up this
wild mountain, yet there was something strange and incompre-
hensible about the unknown, that inspired awe and checked famil-
iarity.

On entering the amphitheatre, new objects of wonder presented
themselves. On a level spot in the centre was a company of odd-
looking personages playing at nine- pins. They were dressed in
a quaint outlandish fashion ; some wore short doublets, others jer-
kins, with long knives in their belts, and most of them had enormous
breeches, of similar style with that of the guide's. Their visages,
too, were peculiar : one had a large beard, broad face, and small
piggish eyes ; the face of another seemed to consist entirely of
nose, and was surmounted by a white sugar-loaf hat set off with a
little red cock's tail. They all had beards, of various shapes and
colors. There was one who seemed to be the commander. He
was a stout old gentleman, with a weather-beaten countenance ;
he wore a laced doublet, broad belt and hanger, high-crowned hat
and feather, red stockings, and high- heeled shoes, with roses in
them. The whole group reminded Rip of the figures in an old
Flemish painting, in the parlor of Dominie Van Shaick, the village
parson, and which had been brought over from Holland at the time
of the settlement.

What seemed particularly odd to Rip was, that though these
folks were evidently amusing themselves, yet they maintained the
gravest faces, the most mysterious silence, and were, withal, the
most melancholy party of pleasure he had ever witnessed. Nothing
interrupted the stillness of the scene but the noise of the balls,

WASHINGTON IRVING 1 33

which, whenever they were rolled, echoed along the mountains
like rumbling peals of thunder.

As Rip and his companion approached them, they suddenly
desisted from their play, and stared at him with such fixed statue-
like gaze, and such strange, uncouth, lack-lustre countenances,
that his heart turned within him, and his knees smote together.
His companion now emptied the contents of the keg into large
flagons, and made signs to him to wait upon the company. He
obeyed with fear and trembling ; they quaffed the liquor in pro-
found silence, and then returned to their game.

By degrees Rip's awe and apprehension subsided. He even
ventured, when no eye was fixed upon him, to taste the beverage,
which he found had much of the flavor of excellent Hollands. He
was naturally a thirsty soul, and was soon tempted to repeat the
draught. One taste provoked another ; and he reiterated his visits
to the flagon so often that at length his senses were overpowered,
his eyes swam in his head, his head gradually declined, and he fell
into a deep sleep.

On waking, he found himself on the green knoll whence he had
first seen the old man of the glen. He rubbed his eyes — it was a
bright sunny morning. The birds were hopping and twittering
among the bushes, and the eagle was wheeling aloft, and breasting
the pure mountain breeze. ** Surely," thought Rip, " I have not
slept here all night." He recalled the occurrences before he fell
asleep. The strange man with a keg of liquor — the mountain
ravine — the wild retreat among the rocks — the woe-begone party
at nine-pins — the flagon — "Oh ! that flagon ! that wicked flagon !"
thought Rip — " what excuse shall I make to Dame Van Winkle ! "

He looked round for his gun, but in place of the clean well-oiled
fowling-piece, he found an old firelock lying by him, the barrel
incrusted with rust, the lock falling ofl", and the stock worm-eaten.
He now suspected that the grave roysters of the mountain had
put a trick upon him, and, having dosed him with liquor, had
robbed him of his gun. Wolf, too, had disappeared, but he might
have strayed away after a squirrel or partridge. He whistled after
him and shouted his name, but all in vain ; the echoes repeated
his whistle and shout, but no dog was to be seen.

He determined to revisit the scene of the last evening's gambol,

134 AMERICAN PROSE

and if he met with any of the party, to demand his dog and gun.
As he rose to walk, he found himself stiff in the joints, and want-
ing in his usual activity. "These mountain beds do not agree
with me," thought Rip, " and if this frolic should lay me up with
a fit of the rheumatism, I shall have a blessed time with Dame
Van Winkle." With some difficulty he got down into the glen ;
he found the gully up which he and his companion had ascended
the preceding evening ; but to his astonishment a mountain stream
was now foaming down it, leaping from rock to rock, and filling
the glen with babbling murmurs. He, however, made shift to
scramble up its sides, working his toilsome way through thickets
of birch, sassafras, and witch-hazel, and sometimes tripped up or
entangled by the wild grapevines that twisted their coils or tendrils
from tree to tree, and spread a kind of network in his path.

At length he reached to where the ravine had opened through
the cHffs to the amphitheatre ; but no traces of such opening re-
mained. The rocks presented a high impenetrable wall over which
the torrent came tumbling in a sheet of feathery foam, and fell
into a broad deep basin, black from the shadows of the surround-
ing forest. Here, then, poor Rip was brought to a stand. He
again called and whistled after his dog; he was only answered
by the cawing of a flock of idle crows, sporting high in air about a
dry tree that overhung a sunny precipice; and who, secure in
their elevation, seemed to look down and scoff at the poor man's
perplexities. What was to be done? the morning was passing
away, and Rip felt famished for want of his breakfast. He grieved
to give up his dog and gun ; he dreaded to meet his wife ; but it
would not do to starve among the mountains. He shook his head,
shouldered the rusty firelock, and, with a heart full of trouble and
anxiety, turned his steps homeward.

[From The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon^ Gent., i8i9-i820,«Rip Van

Winkle."]

THE ENCHANTED STEED

When Governor Manco, or " the one-armed," kept up a show of
military state in the Alhambra, he became nettled at the reproaches

WASHING TON IR VI NG 1 3 5

continually cast upon his fortress, of being a nestling- place of rogues
and contrabandistas. On a sudden, the old potentate determined
on reform, and setting vigorously to work, ejected whole nests of
vagabonds out of the fortress and the gypsy caves with which the
surrounding hills are honeycombed. He sent out soldiers, also, to
patrol the avenues and footpaths, with orders to take up all sus-
picious persons.

One bright summer morning a patrol, consisting of the testy old
corporal who had distinguished himself in the affair of the notary,
a trumpeter, and two privates, was seated under the garden-wall
of the Generalife, beside the. road which leads down from the
Mountain of the Sun, when they heard the tramp of a horse, and
a male voice singing in rough, though not unmusical tones, an old
Castilian campaigning-song.

Presently they beheld a sturdy, sunburnt fellow, clad in the
ragged garb of a foot-soldier, leading a powerful Arabian horse
caparisoned in the ancient Morisco fashion.

Astonished at the sight of a strange soldier descending, steed
in hand, from that solitary mountain, the corporal stepped forth
and challenged him.

" Who goes there ? "

" A friend."

" Who and what are you ? "

" A poor soldier just from the wars, with a cracked crown and
empty purse for a reward."

By this time they were enabled to view him more narrowly. He
had a black patch across his forehead, which, with a grizzled
beard, added to a certain dare-devil cast of countenance, while a
slight squint threw into the whole an occasional gleam of roguish
good-humor.

Having answered the questions of the patrol, the soldier seemed
to consider himself entitled to make others in return. " May I
ask," said he, "what city is that which I see at the foot of the
hill?"

" What city ! " cried the trumpeter ; " come, that's too bad.
Here's a fellow lurking about the Mountain of the Sun, and de-
mands the name of the great city of Granada."

" Granada ! Madre di Dios ! can it be possible ? "

136 AMERICAN PROSE

"Perhaps not!" rejoined the trumpeter; "and perhaps you
have no idea that yonder are the towers of the Alhambra?"

" Son of a trumpet," replied the stranger, " do not trifle with
me ; if this be indeed the Alhambra, I have some strange matters
to reveal to the governor."

"You will have an opportunity," said the corporal, "for we
mean to take you before him." By this time the trumpeter had
seized the bridle of the steed, the two privates had each se-
cured an arm of the soldier, the corporal put himself in front,
gave the word, " Forward — march ! " and away they marched for
the Alhambra.

The sight of a ragged foot-soldier and a fine Arabian horse,
brought in captive by the patrol, attracted the attention of all the
idlers of the fortress, and of those gossip groups that generally as-
semble about wells and fountains at early dawn. The wheel of the
cistern paused in its rotations, and the slip-shod servant-maid stood
gaping, with pitcher in hand, as the corporal passed by with
his prize. A motley train gradually gathered in the rear of the
escort.

Knowing nods and winks and conjectures passed from one to
another. " It is a deserter," said one ; " A contraband ista," said
another ; " A bandolero," said a third ; — until it was affirmed that
a captain of a desperate band of robbers had been captured by the
prowess of the corporal and his patrol. " Well, well," said the old
crones, one to another, " captain or not, let him get out of the
grasp of old Governor Manco if he can, though he is but one-
handed."

Governor Manco was seated in one of the inner halls of the Al-
hambra, taking his morning's cup of chocolate in company with his
confessor, — a fat Franciscan friar, from the neighboring convent.
A demure, dark- eyed damsel of Malaga, the daughter of his house-
keeper, was attending upon him. The world hinted that the dam-
sel, who, with all her demureness, was a sly buxom baggage, had
found out a soft spot in the iron heart of the old governor, and
held complete control over him. But let that pass — the domestic
affairs of these mighty potentates of the earth should not be too
narrowly scrutinized.

When word was brought that a suspicious stranger had been

r.> Ain

WASHINGTON IRVING 1 37

taken lurking about the fortress, and was actually in the outer
court, in durance of the corporal, waiting the pleasure of his
Excellency, the pride and stateliness of office swelled the bosom
of the governor. Giving back his chocolate-cup into the hands
of the demure damsel, he called for his basket-hilted sword,
girded it to his side, twirled up his moustaches, took his seat
in a large high-backed chair, assumed a bitter and forbidding
aspect, and ordered the prisoner into his presence. The soldier
was brought in, still closely pinioned by his captors, and guarded
by the corporal. He maintained, however, a resolute, self-confi-
dent air, and returned the sharp, scrutinizing look of the governor
with an easy squint, which by no means pleased the punctilious
old potentate.

" Well, culprit," said the governor, after he had regarded him
for a moment in silence, " what have you to say for yourself — who
are you?"

" A soldier, just from the wars, who has brought away nothing
but scars and bruises."

" A soldier — humph — a foot-soldier by your garb. I under-
stand you have a fine Arabian horse. I presume you brought him
too from the wars, besides your scars and bruises."

" May it please your Excellency, I have something strange to
tell about that horse. Indeed I have one of the most wonder-
ful things to relate. Something too that concerns the security of
this fortress, indeed of all Granada. But it is a matter to be im-
parted only to your private ear, or in presence of such only as are
in your confidence."

The governor considered for a moment, and then directed the
corporal and his men to withdraw, but to post themselves outside
of the door, and be ready at a call. " This holy friar," said he, " is
my confessor, you may say anything in his presence ; — and this
damsel," nodding towards the handmaid, who had loitered with an
air of great curiosity, " this damsel is of great secrecy and dis-
cretion, and to be trusted with anything."

The soldier gave a glance between a squint and a leer at the
demure handmaid. " I am perfectly willing," said he, " that the
damsel should remain."

When all the rest had withdrawn, the soldier commenced his

1 3 8 AMERICAN PR OSE

Story. He was a fluent, smooth-tongued varlet, and had a com-
mand of language above his apparent rank.

" May it please your Excellency," said he, " I am, as I before
observed, a soldier, and have seen some hard service, but my term
of enlistment being expired, I was discharged, not long since, from
the army at Valladolid, and set out on foot for my native village in
Andalusia. Yesterday evening the sun went down as I was trav-
ersing a great dry plain of old Castile."

"Hold!" cried the governor, "what is this you say? Old
Castile is some two or three hundred miles from this."

" Even so," replied the soldier, coolly. " I told your Excellency
I had strange things to relate ; but not more strange than true,
as your Excellency will find, if you will deign me a patient
hearing."

"Proceed, culprit," said the governor, twirling up his mous-
taches.

"As the sun went down," continued the soldier, "I cast my
eyes about in search of quarters for the night, but fer as my
sight could reach there were no signs of habitation. I saw that
I should have to make my bed on the naked plain, with my knap-
sack for a pillow ; but your Excellency is an old soldier, and knows
that to one who has been in the wars, such a night's lodging is no
great hardship."

The governor nodded assent, as he drew his pocket-handker-
chief out of the basket-hilt to drive away a fly that buzzed about
his nose.

" Well, to make a long story short," continued the soldier, " I
trudged forward for several miles until I came to a bridge over
a deep ravine, through which ran a little thread of water, almost
dried up by the summer heat. At one end of the bridge was a
Moorish tower, the upper end all in ruins, but a vault in the
foundation quite entire. Here, thinks I, is a good place to make
a halt ; so I went down to the stream, and took a hearty drink, for
the water was pure and sweet, and I was parched with thirst ; then,
opening my wallet, I took out an onion and a few crusts, which
were all my provisions, and seating myself on a stone on the mar-
gin of the stream, began to make my supper, — intending afterwards
to quarter myself for the night in the vault of the tower ; and capi-

WASHINGTON IRVING 1 39

tal quarters they would have been for a campaigner just from the
wars, as your Excellency, who is an old soldier, may suppose."

" I have put up gladly with worse in my time," said the gov-
ernor, returning his pocket-handkerchief into the hilt of his sword.

" While I was quietly crunching my crust," pursued the soldier,
" I heard something stir within the vault ; I listened — it was the
tramp of a horse. By-and-by a man came forth from a door in
the foundation of the tower, close by the water's edge, leading a
powerful horse by the bridle. I could not well make out what he
was, by the starlight. It had a suspicious look to be lurking among
the ruins of a tower, in that wild solitary place. He might be a
mere wayfarer, like myself; he might be a contrabandista ; he
might be a bandolero ! what of that? thank heaven and my
poverty, I had nothing to lose; so I sat still and crunched my
crust.

" He led his horse to the water, close by where I was sitting, so
that I had a feir opportunity of reconnoitring him. To my sur-
prise he was dressed in a Moorish garb, with a cuirass of steel,
and a polished skull-cap that I distinguished by the reflection of
the stars upon it. His horse, too, was harnessed in the Morisco
fashion, with great shovel stirrups. He led him, as I said, to the
side of the stream, into which the animal plunged his head almost
to the eyes, and drank until I thought he would have burst.

" ' Comrade,' said I, ' your steed drinks well ; it's a good sign
when a horse plunges his muzzle bravely into the water.'

" ' He may well drink,' said the stranger, speaking with a Moor-
ish accent ; * it is a good year since he had his last draught.'

" ' By Santiago ! ' said I, ' that beats even the camels I have
seen in Africa. But come, you seem to be something of a soldier,
will you sit down and take part of a soldier's fare?' In fact,
I felt the want of a companion in that lonely place, and was will-
ing to put up with an infidel. Besides, as your Excellency well
knows, a soldier is never very particular about the faith of his
company, and soldiers of all countries are comrades on peaceable
ground."

The governor again nodded assent.

" Well, as I was saying, I invited him to share my supper, such
as it was, for I could not do less in common hospitality. ' I have

I40 AMERICAN PROSE

no time to pause for meat or drink/ said he ; ' I have a long jour-
ney to make before morning.'

" ' In which direction ? ' said I.

" * Andalusia/ said he.

"'Exactly my route/ said I; * so, as you won't stop and eat
with me, perhaps you will let me mount and ride with you. I see
your horse is of a powerful frame ; I'll warrant he'll carry double.*

" * Agreed,' said the trooper ; and it would not have been civil
and soldier-Hke to refuse, especially as I had offered to share my
supper with him. So up he mounted, and up I mounted behind
him.

" ' Hold fast,' said he ; * my steed goes like the wind.*

" ' Never fear me,' said I, and so off we set.

" From a walk the horse soon passed to a trot, from a trot to a
gallop, and from a gallop to a harum-scarum scamper. It seemed
as if rocks, trees, houses, everything flew hurry-scurry behind us.

"'What town is this?' said I.

" ' Segovia,' said he ; and before the words were out of his
mouth, the towers of Segovia were out of sight. We swept up the
Guadarama Mountains, and down by the Escurial ; and we skirted
the walls of Madrid, and we scoured away across the plains of La
Mancha. In this way we went up hill and down dale, by towns
and cities, all buried in deep sleep, and across mountains, and
plains, and rivers, just glimmering in the starlight.

"To make a long story short, and not to fatigue your Excel-
lency, the trooper suddenly pulled up on the side of a mountain.
' Here we are,' said he, ' at the end of our journey.' I looked
about, but could see no signs of habitation ; nothing but the
mouth of a cavern. While I looked I saw multitudes of people
in Moorish dresses, some on horseback, some on foot, arriving
as if borne by the wind from all points of the compass, and
hurrying into the mouth of the cavern like bees into a hive.
Before I could ask a question, the trooper struck his long Moorish
spurs into the horse's flanks, and dashed in with the throng. We
passed along a steep winding way, that descended into the very
bowels of the mountain. As we pushed on, a light began to
glimmer up, by little and little, hke the first glimmerings of day,
but what caused it I could not discern. It grew stronger and

WASHINGTON IRVING - I4I

stronger, and enabled me to see everything around. I now no-
ticed, as we passed along, great caverns, opening to the right
and left, like halls in an arsenal. In some there were shields, and
helmets, and cuirasses, and lances, and cimeters, hanging against
the walls ; in others there were great heaps of warlike munitions
and camp-equipage lying upon the ground.

" It would have done your Excellency's heart good, being an
old soldier, to have seen such grand provision for war. Then, in
other caverns, there were long rows of horsemen armed to the
teeth, with lances raised and banners unfurled, all ready for the
field ; but they all sat motionless in their saddles, like so many
statues. In other halls were warriors sleeping on the ground
beside their horses, and foot-soldiers in groups ready to fall into
the ranks. All were in old-fashioned Moorish dresses and armor.

" Well, your Excellency, to cut a long story short, we at length
entered an immense caveni, or I may say palace, of grotto-
work, the walls of which seemed to be veined with gold and silver,
and to sparkle with diamonds and sapphires and all kinds of
precious stones. At the upper end sat a Moorish king on a
golden throne, with his nobles on each side, and a guard of
African blacks with drawn cimeters. All the crowd that continued
to flock in, and amounted to thousands and thousands, passed one
by one before his throne, each paying homage as he passed.
Some of the multitude were dressed in magnificent robes, without
stain or blemish, and sparkling with jewels ; others in burnished
and enamelled armor ; while others were in mouldered and mil-
dewed garments, and in armor all battered and dented and
covered with rust.

" I had hitherto held my tongue, for your Excellency well
knows it is not for a soldier to ask many questions when on duty,
but I could keep silence no longer.

" ' Prithee, comrade,* said I, ' what is the meaning of all this? *

'* ' This,' said the trooper, ' is a great and fearful mystery.
Know, O Christian, that you see before you the court and army
of Boabdil the last king of Granada.*

" ' What is this you tell me?' cried I. ' Boabdil and his court
were exiled from the land hundreds of years agone, and all died
in Africa.'

142 - AMERICAN PROSE

" * So it is recorded in your lying chronicles/ replied the Moor ;
* but know that Boabdil and the warriors who made the lasl
struggle for Granada were all shut up in this mountain by power-
ful enchantment. As for the king and army that marched forth
from Granada at the time of the surrender, they were a mere
phantom train of spirits and demons, permitted to assume those
shapes to deceive the Christian sovereigns. And furthermore let
me tell you, friend, that all Spain is a country under the power of
enchantment. There is not a mountain cave, not a lonely watch-
tower in the plains, nor ruined castle on the hills, but has some
spellbound warriors sleeping from age to age within its vaults,
until the sins are expiated for which Allah permitted the dominion
to pass for a time out of the hands of the faithful. Once every
year, on the eve of St. John, they are released from enchantment
from sunset to sunrise, and permitted to repair here to pay hom-
age to their sovereign ! and the crowds which you beheld swarm-
ing into the cavern are Moslem warriors from their haunts in all
parts of Spain. For my own part, you saw the ruined tower of the
bridge in old Castile, where I have now wintered and summered
for many hundred years, and where I must be back again by day-
break. As to the battalions of horse and foot which you beheld
drawn up in array in the neighboring caverns, they are the spell-
bound warriors of Granada. It is written in the book of fate, that
when the enchantment is broken, Boabdil will descend from the
mountains at the head of this army, resume his throne in the
Alhambra and his sway of Granada, and gathering together
the enchanted warriors from all parts of Spain, will reconquer
the Peninsula and restore it to Moslem rule.*

" ' And when shall this happen ? ' said I.

" * Allah alone knows : we had hoped the day of deliverance
was at hand; but there reigns at present a vigilant governor in
Alhambra, a stanch old soldier, well known as Governor Manco.
While such a warrior holds command of the very outpost, and
stands ready to check the first irruption from the mountain, I
fear Boabdil and his soldiery must be content to rest upon their
arms.' "

Here the governor raised himself somewhat perpendicularly,
adjusted his sword, and twirled up his moustaches.

WASHINGTON IRVING I43

" To make a long story short, and not to fatigue your Excellency,
the trooper, having given me this account, dismounted from his
steed.

" * Tarry here,* said he, ' and guard my steed while I go and
bow the knee to Boabdil.* So saying, he strode away among the
throng that pressed forward to the throne.

"* What's to be done?' thought I, when thus left to myself;
* shall I wait here until this infidel returns to whisk me off on his
goblin steed, the Lord knows where ; or shall I make the most of
my time and beat a retreat from this hobgoblin community?*
A soldier's mind is soon made up, as your Excellency well knows.
As to the horse, he belonged to an avowed enemy of the faith and
the realm, and was a fair prize according to the rules of war. So
hoisting myself from the crupper into the saddle, I turned the
reins, struck the Moorish stirrups into the sides of the steed, and
put him to make the best of his way out of the passage by which
we had entered. As we scoured by the halls where the Moslem
horsemen sat in motionless battalions, I thought I heard the clang
of armor and a hollow murmur of voices. I gave the steed
another taste of the stirrups and doubled my speed. There was
now a sound behind me like a rushing blast ; I heard the clatter
of a thousand hoofs ; a countless throng overtook me. I was
borne along in the press, and hurled forth from the mouth of the
cavern, while thousands of shadowy forms were swept off in every
direction by the four winds of heaven.

" In the whirl and confusion of the scene I was thrown sense-
less to the earth. When I came to myself, I was lying on the
brow of a hill, with the Arabian steed standing beside me ; for in
falling, my arm had slipped within the bridle, which, I presume,
prevented his whisking off to old Castile.

" Your Excellency may easily judge of my surprise, on looking
round, to behold hedges of aloes and Indian figs and other proofs
of a southern climate, and to see a great city below me, with towers,
and palaces, and a grand cathedral.

"I descended the hill cautiously, leading my steed, for I was
afraid to mount him again, lest he should play me some slippery
trick. As I descended I met with your patrol, who let me into
the secret that it was Granada that lay before me, and that I was

144 AMERICAN PROSE

actually under the walls of the Alhambra, the fortress of the re^
doubted Governor Manco, the terror of all enchanted Moslems.
When I heard this, I determined at once to seek your Excel-
lency, to inform you of all that I had seen, and to warn you of
the perils that surround and undermine you, that you may take
measures in time to guard your fortress, and the kingdom itself,
from this intestine army that lurks in the very bowels of the land."

" And prithee, friend, you who are a veteran campaigner, and
have seen so much service," said the governor, "how would you
advise me to proceed, in order to prevent this evil?"

" It is not for an humble private of the ranks," said the soldier,
modestly, " to pretend to instruct a commander of your Excel-
lency's sagacity, but it appears to me that your Excellency might
cause all the caves and entrances into the mountain to be walled
up with solid mason-work, so that Boabdil and his army might be
completely corked up in their subterranean habitation. If the
good father, too," added the soldier, reverently bowing to the
friar, and devoutly crossing himself, " would consecrate the barri-
cadoes with his blessing, and put up a few crosses and relics and
images of saints, I think they might withstand all the power of
infidel enchantments."

" They doubtless would be of great avail," said the friar.

The governor now placed his arm akimbo, with his hand resting
on the hilt of his Toledo, fixed his eye upon the soldier, and
gently wagging his head from one side to the other, —

" So, friend," said he, " then you really suppose I am to be
gulled with this cock-and-bull story about enchanted mountains
and enchanted Moors ? Hark ye, culprit ! — not another word.
An old soldier you may be, but you'll find you have an old soldier
to deal with, and one not easily outgeneralled. Ho ! guards there !
put this fellow in irons."

The demure handmaid would have put in a word in favor of
the prisoner, but the governor silenced her with a look.

As they were pinioning the soldier, one of the guards felt some-
thing of bulk in his pocket, and drawing it forth, found a long
leathern purse that appeared to be well filled. Holding it by one
corner, he turned out the contents on the table before the gov-
ernor, and never did freebooter's bag make more goigeous dc-

WASlltNGTO!^ IRVING 14S

livery. Out tumbled rings, and jewels, and rosaries of pearls, and
sparkling diacnond crosses, and a profusion of ancient golden
coin, some of which fell jingling to the floor, and rolled away to
the uttermost parts of the chamber.

For a time the functions of justice were suspended ; there was
a universal scramble after the glittering fugitives. The governor
alone, who. was imbued with true Spanish pride, maintained his
stalely decorum, though his eye betrayed a little anxiety until the
last coin and jewel was restored to the sack.

The friar was not so calm ; his whole face glowed like a furnace,
and his eyes twinkled and flashed at sight of the rosaries and

" Sacrilegious wretch that thou art ! " exclaimed he ; " what
church or sanctuary hast thou been plundering of these sacred

" Neither one nor the other, holy father. If they be sacrile-
gious spoils, they must have been taken in times long past, by the
infidel trooper 1 have mentioned. I was just going to tell his Ex-
cellency when he interrupted me, that, on taking possession of
the trooper's horse, I unhooked a leathern sack which hung at
the saddle-bow, and which 1 presume contained the plunder of
his campaignings in days of old, when the Moors overran the
country."

" Mighty well ; at present you will make up your mind to take
up your quarters in a chamber of the vermilion tower, which,
though not under a magic spell, will hold you as safe as any cave
of your enchanted Moors."

"Your Excellency wilt do as you think proper," said the
prisoner, coolly. " 1 shall be thankful to your Excellency for any
accommodation in the fortress. A soldier who has been in the
wars, as your Excellency well knows, is not particular about his
lodgings ; and provided I have a snug dungeon and regular
rations, I shall manage to make myself comfortable. I would
only entreat that while your Excellency is so careful about me,
you would have an eye to your fortress, and think on the hint I
dropped about stopping up the entrances to the mountain,"

Here ended the scene. The prisoner was conducted to a
strung dungeon in the vermilion tower, the Arabian steed was

146 AMERICAN PROSE

led to his Excellency's stable, and the trooper's sack was deposited
in his Excellency's strong-box. To the latter, it is true, the friar
made some demur, questioning whether the sacred relics, which
were evidently sacrilegious spoils, should not be placed in custody
of the church ; but as the governor was peremptory on the sub-
ject, and was absolute lord in the Alhambra, the friar discreetly
dropped the discussion, but determined to convey intelligence of
the fact to the church dignitaries in Granada.

[ The Alhambra : a Series of Tales and Sketches of (hi Moors and Span-
iardSf 1832, " Governor Manco and the Soldier.*']

JAMES FENIMORE COOPER

[James Fenimore Cooper was born at Burlington, N.J., Sept. 15, 1789,
and died at G)operstown, N. Y., Sept. 14, 1851. His early years were
spent at Cooperstown, then on the border of, if not actually within, the western
wilderness. He entered Yale College in 1803, and was dismissed for breach
of discipline in 1805. In preparation for entering the navy he served before
the mast on a merchantman in 1806-7. In 1808 he was appointed midship-
man, a position which he held until 18 10. A part of this time was spent in
duty on Lakes Champlain and Ontario. From the time of his marriage (1811}
to that of his death, Cooper's life was that of the gentleman of leisure. The
years 1826-33 he spent in Europe, and at various times he lived in New York
City and Westchester County. But his strongest associations were with Coopers-
town, where he held large tracts of land, and it became his permanent home.

Cooper's first book. Precaution (1820) , owed its existence to a careless boast of
his that he could write a better story than a certain British novel that had come
under his eye. Precaution dealt with foreign life, and Cooper's friends re-
proached him for not portraying that of his native country. Thus incited,
he produced The Spy (1821), the plot of which was laid in Westchester.
The favorable reception of The Spy led to a rapid succession of remarkabU
tales of romantic adventure on land and sea, of which the more famous are
The Pioneers (1823), The Pilot (1823), The Last of the Mohicans (1826),
The Prairie (1827), The Red Rover (1828), The Water Witch (1830),
The Pathfinder {l%^Q), The Deer slayer {\%/^\), The Wing-and- Wing (1S42),

Besides his novels Cooper wrote a History of the Navy of the United States
(1839), and several volumes of biography, history, and travel. Much of this
part of his work was explicitly or implicitly polemic in character. He
criticised severely the manners of his countrymen and their methods of
government, as well as the corresponding manners and methods of European
countries, thus exposing himself to retaliatory criticism, both at home and
abroad. For many years he was almost constantly involved in lawsuits and
can scarcely be said to have been beloved by his countrymen at large. But
though intolerant, he had a strong sense of honor and justice, and was
always actuated by lofty principles and an unswerving patriotism. The best
biography of Cooper is that of T. R. Lounsbury.]

147 _

148 AMERICAN PROSE

•* Cooper, whose name is with his country's woven
First in her ranks; her Pioneer of mind."

These were the words in which Fitz-Greene Halleck designated
Cooper's substantial precedence in American novel-writing. Apart
from this mere priority in time, he rendered the unique service of
inaugurating three especial classes of fiction, — the novel of the
American Revolution, the Indian novel, and the sea novel. In
each case he wrote primarily for his own fellow-countrymen and
achieved fame first at their hands ; and in each he produced a
class of works which, in spite of their own faults and of the some-
what unconciliatory spirit of their writer, have secured a per-
manence and a width of range unequalled in the English language,
save by Scott alone. To-day the sale of his works in his own
language remains unabated ; and one has only to look over the
catalogues of European booksellers in order to satisfy himself that
this popularity continues, undiminished, through the medium of
translation. It may be safely said of him that no author of fiction
in the English language, except Scott, has held his own so well for
half a century after death. Indeed, the list of various editions
and versions of his writings in the catalogues of German book-
sellers often exceeds that of Scott. This was not in the slightest
degree due to his personal qualities, for these made him unpopular,
nor to personal manoeuvring, for this he disdained. He was known
to refuse to have his works even noticed in a newspaper for which
he wrote, the New York Patriot. He would never have consented
to review his own books, as both Scott and Irving did, or to write
direct or indirect puffs of himself, as was done by Poe and Whitman.
He was foolishly sensitive to criticism, and unable to conceal it ;
he was easily provoked to a quarrel ; he was dissatisfied both with
praise or blame, and speaks evidently of himself in the words of
the hero of Miles IVaiiifig/ordy when he says : " In scarce a cir-
cumstance of my life that has brought me in the least under the
cognizance of the public have I ever been judged justly." There
is no doubt that he himself — or rather the temperament given him
by nature — was to blame for this, but the fact is unquestionable.

Add to this that he was, in his way and in what was unfortu-
nately the most obnoxious way, a reformer. That is, he was what

■jJk

JAMES FENIMORE COOPER I49

may be called 3 reformer in the conservative direction, — he be-
labored his fellow-citizens for changing many English ways and
usages, and he wished them to change these things back again,
immediately. In all this he was absohitely unselfish, but utterly
tactless ; and inasmuch as the point of view he took was one re-
quiring the very greatest tact, the defect was hopeless. As a rule,
no roan criticises American ways so unsuccessfully as an American
who has lived many years in Europe. The mere European
critic is ignorant of our ways and frankly owns it, even if thinking
the fact but a small disqualification ; while the American absentee,
having remained away long enough to have forgotten many things
and never to have seen many others, has dropped hopelessly
behindhand as to the facts, yet claims to speak with authority.
Cooper went even beyond these professional absentees, because,
while they are usually ready to praise other countries at the
expense of America, Cooper, with heroic impartiality, dispraised
all countries, or at least all that spoke English. .\ thoroughly
patriotic and highminded man, he yet had no mental perspective,
and made small matters as important as great. Constantly re-
proaching America for not being Europe, he also satirized Elurope
for being what it was. As a result, he was for a time equally
detested by the press of both countries. The English, he thought,
had " a national propensity to blackguardism," and certainly the
remarks he drew from them did something to vindicate the charge.
When the London Times called him " affected, offensive, curious,
and ill-conditioned," and Fraser's- Magazine, "a liar, a bilious
braggart, a full jackass, an insect, a grub, and a reptile," they
clearly left little for America to say in that direction. Yet Park
Benjamin did his best, or hts worst, when he called Cooper (in
Greeley's New Yorker) " a superlative dolt and the common mark
of scorn and contempt of every well-informed American " ; and
so did Webb, when he pronounced the novelist "a base-minded
caitiff who had traduced his coimtry." Not being able to reach
his English opponents. Cooper turned on these Americans, and
spent years in attacking Webb and others through the courts,
gaining little and losing much through the long vicissitudes of
petty local lawsuits. The fact has kept alive their memory ; but
for Lowell's keener shaft, " Cooper has written six volumes to

I50 AMERICAN PROSE

show he's as good as a lord," there was no redress. The arrow
lodged and split the target.

Like Scott and most other novelists, Cooper was rarely success-
ful with his main characters, but was saved by his subordinate
ones. These were strong, fresh, characteristic, human ; and they
lay, as has been said, in several different directions, all equally
marked. If he did not create permanent types in Harvey Birch
the spy, Leather-Stocking the woodsman. Long Tom Coffin the
sailor, Chingachgook the Indian, then there is no such thing as
the creation of characters in literature. Scott was far more pro-
fuse and varied, but he gave no more of life to individual person-
ages and perhaps created no types so universally recognized.
What is most remarkable is that, in the case of the Indian espe-
cially. Cooper was not only in advance of the knowledge of his
own time, but of that of the authors who immediately followed
him. In Parkman and Palfrey, for instance, the Indian of Cooper
vanishes and seems wholly extinguished, but under the closer in-
spection of Alice Fletcher and Horatio Hale, the lost figure
reappears, and becomes more picturesque, more poetic, more
thoughtful than even Cooper dared to make him. The instinct
of the novelist turned out more authoritative than the premature
conclusions of a generation of historians.

It is only women who can draw the commonplace, at least in
English, and make it fascinating. Perhaps only two English wo-
men have done this, Jane Austen and George Eliot, while in
France George Sand has certainly done it far less well than it has
been achieved by Balzac and Daudet. Cooper never succeeded
in it for a single instant, and even when he has an admiral of this
type to write about, he puts into him less of life than Marryat im-
parts to the most ordinary lieutenant. The talk of Cooper's civil-
ian worthies is, as Professor Lounsbury has well said — in what is
perhaps the best biography yet written of any American author —
" of a kind not known to human society." This is doubtless aggra-
vated by the frequent use of thee and thou, yet this, which Profes-
sor Lounsbury attributes to Cooper's Quaker ancestry, was in
truth a part of the formality of the old period, and is found also in
Brockden Brown. And as his writings conform to their period in
this, so they did in other respects ; describing every woman, for

JAMES FENIMORE COOPER I51

instance, as a "female" and making her to be such as Cooper
himself describes the heroine of Mercedes of Castile to be when
he says, " Her very nature is made up of religion and female
decorum." Scott himself could also draw such inane figures, yet
in Jeanie Deans he makes an average Scotch woman heroic, and
in Meg Merrilies and Madge Wildfire he paints the extreme of
daring self-will. There is scarcely a novel of Scott's where some
woman has not shown qualities which approach the heroic ; while
Cooper scarcely produced one where a woman rises even to the
level of an interesting commonplaceness. She may be threatened,
endangered, tormented, besieged in forts, captured by Indians,
but the same monotony prevails. So far as the real interests of
Cooper's story goes it might usually be destitute of a single
"female," that sex appearing chiefly as a bundle of dry goods
to be transported, or as a fainting appendage to the skirmish.

His long introductions he shared with the other novelists of the
day, or at least with Scott, for both Miss Austen and Miss Edge-
worth are more modern in this respect and strike more promptly
into the tale. His loose-jointed plots are also shared with Scott,
but he knows as surely as Scott how to hold the reader's attention
when once grasped. Like Scott's, too, is his fearlessness in giving
details, instead of the vague generalizations which were then in
fashion, and to which his academical critics would have confined
him. He is indeed already vindicated in some respects by the
advance of the art he practised ; where he led the way, the best
literary practice has followed. The Edinburgh Review exhausted
its heavy artillery upon him for his accurate descriptions of cos-
tume and localities, and declared that they were " an epilepsy of
the fancy " and that a vague general account would have been far
better. " Why describe the dress and appearance of an Indian
chief, down to his tobacco-stopper and button-holes?" We now
see that it is this very habit which has made Cooper's Indian a per-
manent figure in literature, while the Indians of his predecessor,
Charles Brockden Brown, were merely dusky spectres. " Poetry or
romance," continued the Edinburgh Review^ " does not descend
into the particulars," this being the same fallacy satirized by
Ruskin, whose imaginary painter produced a quadruped which
was a generalization between a pony and a pig. Balzac, who risked

152 AMERICAN PROSE

the details of buttons and tobacco pipes as fearlessly as Cooper,
said of The Pathfinder ^ " Never did the art of writing tread closer
upon the art of the pencil. This is the school of study for literary
landscape painters." He says elsewhere : " If Cooper had suc-
ceeded in the painting of character to the same extent that he did
in the painting of the phenomena of nature, he would have uttered
the last word of our art." Upon such praise as this the reputation
of James Fenimore Cooper may well rest.

Thomas Wentworth Higginson

JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 153

HAWKEYE AND HIS FRIENDS

Before these fields were shorn and tilled.

Full to the brim our rivers flowed ;
The melody of waters filled

The fresh and boundless wood ;
And torrents dashed, and rivulets played,
And fountains spouted in the shade.

Bryant.

Leaving the unsuspecting Heyward and his confiding com-
panions to penetr^e still deeper into a forest that contained such
treacherous inmates, we must use an author's privilege, and shift
the scene a few miles to the westward of the place where we have
last seen them.

On that day, two men were lingering on the banks of a small
but rapid stream, within an hour's journey of the encampment of
Webb, like those who awaited the appearance of an absent person,
or the approach of some expected event. The vast canopy of
woods spread itself to the margin of the river, overhanging the
water and shadowing its dark current with a deeper hue. The
rays of the sun were beginning to grow less fierce, and the intense
heat of the day was lessened, as the cooler vapors of the springs
and fountains rose above their leafy beds, and rested in the atmos-
phere. Still, that breathing silence, which marks the drowsy sultri-
ness of an American landscape in July, pervaded the secluded
spot, interrupted only by the low voices of the men, the occasional
and lazy tap of a woodpecker, the discordant cry of some gaudy
jay, or a swelling on the air from the dull roar of a distant water-
fall.

These feeble and broken sounds were, however, too familiar to
the foresters to draw their attention from the more interesting
matter of their dialogue. While one of these loiterers showed the
red skin and wild accoutrements of a native of the woods, the
other exhibited, through the mask of his rude and nearly savage
equipments, the brighter, though sunburnt and long- faded com-
plexion of one who might claim descent from a European parent-
age. The former was seated on the end of a mossy log, in a
posture that permitted him to heighten the effect of his earnest

1 54 AMERICAN PROSE

language by the calm but expressive gestures of an Indian en-
gaged in debate. His body, which was nearly naked, presented a
terrific emblem of death, drawn in intermingled colors of white
and black. His closely shaved head, on which no other hair than
the well-known and chivalrous scalping-tuft* was preserved, was
without ornament of any kind, with the exception of a solitary
eagle*s plume that crossed his crown and depended over the left
shoulder. A tomahawk and scalping- knife, of English manufacture,
were in the girdle ; while a short mihtary rifle, of that sort with
which the policy of the whites armed their savage allies, lay care-
lessly across his bare and sinewy knee. The expanded chest, full-
formed limbs, and grave countenance of this warrior would denote
that he had reached the vigor of his days, though no symptoms of
decay appeared to have yet weakened his manhood.

The frame of the white man, judging by such parts as were not
concealed by his clothes, was like that of one who had known
hardships and exertion from his earliest youth. His person, though
muscular, was rather attenuated than full ; but every nerve and
muscle appeared strung and indurated by unremitted exposure
and toil. He wore a hunting-shirt of forest green, fringed with
faded yellow,^ and a summer cap of skins which had been shorn
of their fur. He also bore a knife in a girdle of wampum, like
that which confined the scanty garments of the Indian, but no
tomahawk. His moccasins were ornamented after the gay fash-
ion of the natives, while the only part of his under-dress which
appeared below the hunting- frock was a pair of buckskin leggins
that laced at the sides, and which were gartered above the knees
with the sinews of a deer. A pouch and horn completed his per-

1 The North American warrior caused the hair to be plucked from his whole
body ; a small tuft, only, was left on the crown of his head in order that his enemy
might avail himself of it, in wrenching off the scalp in the event of his fall. The
scalp was the only admissible trophy of victory. Thus, it was deemed more impor-
tant to obtain the scalp than to kill the man. Some tribes lay great stress on the
honor of striking a dead body. These practices have nearly disappeared among
the Indians of the Atlantic States.

2 The hunting-shirt is a picturesque smock frock, being shorter, and ornamented
with fringes and tassels. The colors are intended to imitate the hues of the wood
with a view to concealment. Many corps of American riflemen have been thus
attired ; and the dress is one of the most striking of modern times. The hunting-
shirt is frequently white.

JAMES FEN IM ORE COOPER 1 55

sonal accoutrements, though a rifle of great length,* which the
theory of the more ingenious whites had taught them was the
most dangerous of all fire-arms, leaned against a neighboring sap-
ling. The eye of the hunter, or scout, whichever he might be,
was small, quick, keen, and restless, roving while he spoke, on
every side of him, as if in quest of game, or distrusting the sudden
approach of some lurking enemy. Notwithstanding these symp-
toms of habitual suspicion, his countenance was not only without
guile, but at the moment at which he is introduced, it was charged
with an expression of sturdy honesty.

" Even your traditions make the case in my favor, Chingach-
gook," he said, speaking in the tongue which was known to all the
natives who formerly inhabited the country between the Hudson
and the Potomac, and of which we shall give a free translation for
the benefit of the reader ; enfleavoring, at the same time, to pre-
serve some of the peculiarities, both of the individual and of the
language. " Your fathers came from the setting sun, crossed the
big river,^ fought the people of the country, and took the land ;
and mine came from the red sky of the morning, over the salt
lake, and did their work much after the fashion that had been set
them by yours ; then let God judge the matter between us, and
friends spare their words ! "

" My fathers fought with the naked redmen ! " returned the
Indian, sternly, in the same language. " Is there no difference,
Hawkeye, between the stone-headed arrow of the warrior, and
the leaden bullet with which you kill?'*

" There is reason in an Indian, though nature has made him with
a red skin ! " said the white man, shaking his head like one on
whom such an appeal to his justice was not thrown away. For a
moment he appeared to be conscious of having the worst of the
argument ; then, rallying again, he answered the objection of his
antagonist in the best manner his limited information would allow :
" I am no scholar, and I care not who knows it ; but judging from

1 The rifle of the army is short ; that of the hunter is always long.

2 The Mississippi. The scout alludes to a tradition which is very popular
among the tribes of the Atlantic States. Evidence of their Asiatic origin is de-
duced from the circumstances, though great uncertainty hangs over the whole
history of the Indians.

1 56 AMERICAN PROSE

what I have seen, at deer chases and squirrel hunts, of the sparks
below, I should think a rifle in the hands of their grandfathers was
not so dangerous as a hickory bow and a good fliot-head might be,
if drawn with Indian judgment, and sent by an Indian eye."

" You have the story told by your fathers," returned the other,
coldly waving his hand. " What say your old men ? Do they tell
the young warriors that the, pale- faces met the redmen, painted
for war and armed with the stone hatchet and wooden gun ? "

" I am not a prejudiced man, nor one who vaunts himself on
his natural privileges, though the worst enemy I have on earth,
and he is an Iroquois, daren't deny that I am genuine white,** the
scout replied, surveying, with secret satisfaction, the faded color
of his bony and sinewy hand ; " and I am willing to own that my
people have many ways of which, as an honest man, I can't ap-
prove. It is one of their customs to*write in books what they have
done and seen, instead of telling them in their villages, where the
lie can be given to the face of a cowardly boaster, and the brave
soldier can call on his comrades to witness for the truth of his
words. In consequence of this bad fashion, a man who is too
conscientious to misspend his days among the women in learning
the names of black marks, may never hear of the deeds of his
fathers, nor feel a pride in striving to outdo them. For myself, I
conclude the Bumppos could shoot, for I have a natural turn
with the rifle, which must have been handed down from generation
to generation, as, our holy commandments tell us, all good and
evil gifts are bestowed ; though I should be loth to answer for
other people in such a matter. But every story has its two sides ;
so I ask you, Chingachgook, what passed according to the tradi-
tions of the redmen, when our fathers first met?"

A silence of a minute succeeded, during which the Indian sat
mute ; then, full of the dignity of his office, he commenced his
brief tale, with a solemnity that served to heighten its appearance
of truth.

" Listen, Hawkeye, and your ear shall drink no lie. *Tis what
my fathers have said, and what the Mohicans have done.*' He
hesitated a single instant, and bending a cautious glance toward
his companion, he continued, in a manner that was divided be-
tween interrogation and assertion, " Does not this stream at our

JAMES FEN i MORE COOPER 1 57

feet run toward the summer, until its waters grow salt, and the
current flows upward ? "

" It can't be denied that your traditions tell you true in both these
matters," said the white man ; " for I have been there, and have
seen them; though why water, which is so sweet in the shade,
should become bitter in the sun, is an alteration for which I have
never been able to account."

"And the current?" demanded the Indian, who expected his
reply with that sort of interest that a man feels in the confirma-
tion of testimony at which he marvels even while he respects it ;
the fathers of Chingachgook have not lied ! "

The Holy Bible is not more true, and that is the truest thing
in nature. They call this up-stream current the tide, which is a
thing soon explained, and clear enough. Six hours the waters
run in, and six hours they run out, and the reason is this : when
there is higher water in the sea than in the river, they run in, until
the river gets to be the highest, and then it runs out again."

" The waters in the woods, and on the great lakes, run down-
ward until they lie like my hand," said the Indian, stretching the
limb horizontally before him, " and then they run no more."

" No honest man will deny it," said the scout, a little nettled at
the implied distrust of his explanation of the mystery of the tides :
"and I grant that it is true on the small scale, and where the
land is level. But everything depends on what scale you look
at things. Now, on the small scale, the 'arth is level ; but on the
large scale it is round. In this manner, pools and ponds, and
even the great fresh-water lake, may be stagnant, as you and I
both know they are, having seen them ; but when you come to
spread water over a great tract, like the sea, where the earth is
round, how in reason can the water be quiet? You might as well
expect the river to lie still on the brink of those black rocks a
mile above us, though your own ears tell you that it is tumbling
over them at this very moment ! "

If unsatisfied by the philosophy of his companion, the Indian
was far too dignified to betray his unbelief. He listened like one
who was convinced, and resumed his narrative in his former
solemn manner.

We came from the place where the sun is hid at night, over

IS8 AMERICAN PROSE

great plains where the buffaloes live, until we reached the big river.
There we fought the Alligewi, till the ground was red with their
blood. From the banks of the big river to the shores of the salt
lake, there was none to meet us. The Maquas followed at a dis-
tance. We said the country should be ours from the place where
the water runs up no longer on this stream, to a river twenty suns'
journey toward the summer. The land we had taken like warriors,
we kept like men. We drove the Maquas into the woods with
the bears. They only tasted salt at the licks ; they drew no fish
from the great lake : we threw them the bones."

" All this I have heard and believe," said the white man, observ-
ing that the Indian paused : " but it was long before the English
came into the country."

"A pine grew then where this chestnut now stands. The
first pale-faces who came among us spoke no English. They came
in a large canoe, when my fathers had buried the tomahawk with
the redmen around them. Then, Hawkeye," he continued, be-
traying his deep emotion only by permitting his voice to fall to
those low, guttural tones which rendered his language, as spoken at
times, so very musical ; " then, Hawkeye, we were one people,
and we were happy. The salt lake gave us its fish, the wood its
deer, and the air its birds. We took wives who bore us children ;
we worshipped the Great Spirit ; and we kept the Maquas beyond
the sound of our songs of triumph."

" Know you anything of your own family at that time ? " de-
manded the white. " But you are a just man, for an Indian ; and,
as I suppose you hold their gifts, your fathers must have been brave
warriors, and wise men at the council fire."

" My tribe is the grandfather of nations, but I am an unmixed
man. The blood of chiefs is in my veins, where it must stay for-
ever. The Dutch landed, and gave my people the fire-water;
they drank until the heavens and the earth seemed to meet, and
they foolishly thought they had found the Great Spirit. Then they
parted with their land. Foot by foot they were driven back from
the shores, until I, that am a chief and a sagamore, have never
seen the sun shine but through the trees, and have never visited the
graves of my fathers ! "

"Graves bring solemn feelings over the mind," returned the

JAMES FENIMORE COOPER I59

scout, a good deal touched at the calm suffering of his companion ;
'* and they often aid a man in his good intentions ; though, for my-
self, I expect to leave my own bones unburied, to bleach in the
woods, or to be torn asunder by the wolves. But where are to be
found those of your race who came to their kin in the Delaware
country, so many summers since?"

" Where are the blossoms of those summers ! — fallen, one by
one : so all of my family departed, each in his turn, to the land of
spirits. I am on the hill- top, and must go down into the valley ;
and when Uncas follows in my footsteps, there will no longer be
any of the blood of the sagamores, for my boy is the last of the
Mohicans."

** Uncas is here ! " said another voice, in the same soft, guttural
tones, near his elbow ; " who speaks to Uncas ? "

The white man loosened his knife in his leathern sheath, and
made an involuntary movement of the hand toward his rifle, at this
sudden interruption ; but the Indian sat composed, and without
turning his head at the unexpected sounds.

At the next instant, a youthful warrior passed between them,
with a noiseless step, and seated himself on the bank of the rapid
stream. No exclamation of surprise escaped the father, nor was
any question asked, or reply given, for several minutes ; each ap-
pearing to await the moment when he might speak, without betray-
ing womanish curiosity or childish impatience. The white man
seemed to take counsel from their customs, and, relinquishing his
grasp of the rifle, he also remained silent and reserved. At length
Chingachgook turned his eyes slowly towards his son and de-
manded, —

" Do the Maquas dare to leave the print of their moccasins in
these woods?**

" I have been on their trail,** replied the young Indian, " and
know that they number as many as the fingers of my two hands ;
but they lie hid, like cowards.'*

" The thieves are out-lying for scalps and plunder ! ** said the
white man, whom we shall call Hawkeye, after the manner of his
companions. " That bushy Frenchman, Montcalm, will send
his spies into our very camp^ but he will know what road we
travel ! "

l60 AMERICAN PROSE

** Tis enough ! " returned the father, glancing his eye towards the
setting sun ; " they shall be driven Hke deer from their bushes.
Hawkeye, let us eat to-night, and show the Maquas that we are
men to-morrow.'*

" I am as ready to do the one as the other ; but to fight the Iro-
quois 'tis necessary to find the skulkers ; and to eat 'tis necessary
to get the game — talk of the devil and he will come ; there is a
pair of the biggest antlers I have seen this season, moving the bushes
below the hill ! Now, Uncas," he continued in a half whisper, and
laughing with a kind of inward sound, like one who had learnt
to be watchful, " I will bet my charger three times full of powder,
against a foot of wampum, that I take him atwixt the eyes, and
nearer to the right than to the left."

" It cannot be ! " said the young Indian, springing to his feet
with youthful eagerness ; ** all but the tips of his horns are hid ! "

" He's a boy ! " said the white man, shaking his head while he
spoke, and addressing the father. " Does he think when a hunter
sees a part of the creatur', he can't tell where the rest of him
should be ! "

Adjusting his rifle, he was about to make an exhibition of that
skill on which he so much valued himself, when the warrior struck
up the piece with his hand, saying, —

** Hawkeye ! will you fight the Maquas ? "

" These Indians know the nature of the woods, as it might be by
instinct ! " returned the scout, dropping his rifle, and turning away
like a man who was convinced of his error. " I must leave the
buck to your arrow, Uncas, or we may kill a deer for them thieves,
the Iroquois, to eat."

The instant the father seconded this intimation by an expressive
gesture of the hand, Uncas threw himself on the ground and ap-
proached the animal with wary movements. When within a few
yards of the cover, he fitted an arrow to his bow with the utmost
care, while the antlers moved, as if their owner snuffed an enemy
in the tainted air. In another moment the twang of the cord was
heard, a white streak was seen glancing into the bushes, and the
wounded buck plunged from the cover to the very feet of his
hidden enemy. Avoiding the horns of the infuriated animal, Uncas
darted to his side, and passed his knife across the throat, when

JAMES FENlMOftE COOPER

l6l

houLidiug to the edge of the river it fell, dyeing the waters with
its blood.

"'Twas done with Indian skill," said the scout, laughing in-
wardly, but with vast satisfaction ; " and 'twas a pretty sight to
behold ! Though an arrow is a near shot, and needs a knife to
finish the work."

" Hugh !" ejaculated his companion, turning quickly, Uke a hound
who scented game.

" By the Lord, there is a drove of them ! " exclaimed the scout,
wliose eyes began to glisten with tlie ardor of his usual occupation ;
" if they come within range of a bullet I will drop one, though the
whole Six Nations should be lurking within sound ! What do you
hear, Chingachgook? for to my ears the woods are dumb."

"There is but one deer, and he is dead," said the Indian, bend-
ing his body till his ear nearly touched the earth. " I hear the
sounds of feel ! "

" Perhaps the wolves have driven the buck to shelter, and are
following on his trail,"

■' No. The horses of white men are coming 1 " returned the other,
raising himself with dignity, and resuming his seat on the log with
his' former composure. " Hawkeye, tliey are yo\ir brothers ; speak
to them."

"That will I, and in English that the king needn't be ashamed
to answer," returned the hunter, speaking in the language of which
he bbasted ; " but I see nothing, nor do I hear the sounds of man
or beast; 'tis strange that an Indian should understand white
sounds better than a man who, his very enemies will own, has no
cross in his blood, ahhough he may have lived with the redskins
long enough to be suspected ! Ha ! there goes something like the
cracking of a dry stick, too — now I hear the bushes move — yes,
yes, there is a trampling that I mistook for the falls — and — but
here they come themselves ; God keep them from the Iroquois ! "

\_The Last of tht Mohicam, a narrative of i-j^y, 1826, chapter 3.]

1 62 AMERICAN PROSE

THE ARIEL AND THE ALACRITY

" Thus guided on their course they bore,
Until they neared the mainland shore ;
When frequent on the hollow blast,
Wild shouts of merriment were cast."

Lord of the IsUs,

The joyful shouts and hearty cheers of the AriePs crew continued
for some time after her commander had reached her deck. Barn-
stable answered the congratulations of his officers by cordial shakes
of the hand ; and after waiting for the ebullition of delight among
the seamen to subside a little, he beckoned with an air of authority
for silence.

" I thank you, my lads, for your good-will," he said, when all
were gathered around him in deep attention : " they have given
us a tough chase, and if you had left us another mile to go, we had
been lost. That fellow is a king*s cutter ; and though his disposi-
tion to run to leeward is a good deal mollified, yet he shows signs
of fight. At any rate, he is stripping off some of his clothes, which
looks as if he were game. Luckily for us. Captain Manual has
taken all the marines ashore with him (though what he has done
with them or himself, is a mystery), or we should have had our
decks lumbered with live cattle ; but, as it is, we have a good
working breeze, tolerably smooth water, and a dead match ! There
is a sort of national obligation on us to whip that fellow ; 'and
therefore, without more words about the matter, let us turn to and
do it, that we may get our breakfasts."

To this specimen of marine eloquence the crew cheered as
usual, the young men burning for the combat, and the few old
sailors who belonged to the schooner shaking their heads with in-
finite satisfaction, and swearing by sundry strange oaths that their
captain " could talk, when there was need of such a thing, like the
best dictionary that ever was launched."

During this short harangue, and the subsequent comments, the
Ariel had been kept under a cloud of canvas, as near to the wind
as she could lie ; and as this was her best sailing, she had stretched
swiftly out from the land to a distance whence the cliffs, and the
soldiers who were spread along their summits, became plainly

JAMES FEN IM ORE COOPER 1 63

visible. Barnstable turned his glass repeatedly, from the cutter to
the shore, as different feelings predominated in his breast, before
he again spoke.

"If Mr. Griffith is stowed away among those rocks," he at
length said, " he shall see as pretty an argument discussed, in as
few words, as he ever listened to, provided the gentlemen in yon-
der cutter have not changed their minds as to the road they intend
to journey — what think you, Mr. Merry?"

" I wish with all my heart and soul, sir," returned the fearless
boy, " that Mr. Griffith was safe aboard us ; it seems the country
is alarmed, and God knows what will happen if he is taken ! As
to the fellow to windward, he'll find it easier to deal with the
Ariers boat than with her mother ; but he carries a broad sail ; I
question if he means to show play."

" Never doubt him, boy," said Barnstable, " he is working off
the shore, like a man of sense, and besides, he has his spectacles
on, trying to make out what tribe of Yankee Indians we belong to.
You'll see him come to the wind presently, and send a few pieces
of iron down this way, by way of letting us know where to find
him. Much as I like your first lieutenant, Mr. Merry, I would rather
leave him on the land this day, than see him on my decks. I want
no fighting captain to work this boat for me ! But tell the drum-
mer, sir, to beat to quarters."

The boy, who was staggering under the weight of his melodious
instrument, had been expecting this command, and without waiting
for the midshipman to communicate the order, he commenced
that short rub-a-dub air, that will at any time rouse a thousand men
from the deepest sleep, and cause them to fly to their means
of offense with a common soul. The crew of the Ariel had been
collected in groups, studying the appearance of the enemy, crack-
ing their jokes, and waiting only for this usual order to repair to
the guns ; and at the first tap of the drum, they spread with
steadiness to the different parts of the little vessel, where their
various duties called them. The cannon were surrounded by
small parties of vigorous and athletic young men ; the few marines
were drawn up in array with muskets ; the officers appeared in
their boarding-caps, with pistols stuck in their belts, and naked
sabres in their hands. Barnstable paced his little quarter-deck

164 AMERICAN PROSE

with a firm tread, dangling a speak ing-tnimpet by its lanyard on
his forefinger, or occasionally applying the glass to his eye, which,
when not in use, was placed under one arm, while his sword was
resting against the foot of the mainmast ; a pair of heavy ship's
pistols were thrust into his belt also ; and piles of muskets, board-
ing-pikes, and naked sabres were placed on different parts of the
deck. The laugh of the seamen was heard no longer ; and those
who spoke uttered their thoughts only in low and indistinct whis-
pers.

The English cutter held her way from the land until she got an
offing of more than two miles, when she reduced her sails to a yet
smaller number ; and heaving into the wind, she fired a gun in a
direction opposite to that which pointed to the Ariel,

" Now I would wager a quintal of codfish. Master Coffin," said
Barnstable, " against the best cask of porter that was ever brewed
in England, that fellow believes a Yankee schooner can fly in the
wind's eye ! If he wishes to speak to us, why don*t he give his
cutter a little sheet and come down?"

The cockswain had made his arrangements for the combat with
much more method and philosophy than any other man in the
vessel. When the drum beat to quarters, he threw aside his jacket,
vest, and shirt, with as little hesitation as if he stood under an
American sun, and with all the discretion of a man who had en-
gaged in an undertaking that required the free use of his utmost
powers. As he was known to be a privileged individual in the
Ariel, and one whose opinions, in all matters of seamanship, were
regarded as oracles by the crew, and were listened to by his com-
mander with no little demonstration of respect, the question ex-
cited no surprise. He was standing at the breech of his long gun,
with his brawny arms folded on a breast that had been turned to
the color of blood by long exposure, his grizzled locks fluttering in
the breeze, and his tall form towering far above the heads of all
near him.

" He hugs the wind, sir, as if it was his sweetheart," was his
answer ; " but he'll let go his hold soon ; and if he don't, we can
find a way to make him fall to leeward."

" Keep a good full ! " cried the commander, in a stern voice ;
" and let the vessel go through the water. That fellow walks well.

JAMES FENIMOKE COOPER 165

long Tom ; but we are too much for him on a bowline ; though,
if he continue to draw ahead in this manner, it will be night be-
fore we can get alongside him."

" Aye, aye, sir,*' returned the cockswain ; " them cutters carries
a press of canvas when they seem to have but little ; their gaffs are
all the same as young booms, and spread a broad head to their
mainsails. But it's no hard matter to knock a few cloths out
of their bolt-ropes, when she will both drop astarn and to lee-
ward.**

" I believe there is good sense in your scheme this time," said
Barnstable ; " for I am anxious about the frigate's people — though
I hate a noisy chase ; speak to him, Tom, and let us see if he will
answer."

" Aye, aye, sir," cried the cockswain, sinking his body in such a
manner as to let his head fall to a level with the cannon that he
controlled, when, after divers orders, and sundry movements to
govern the direction of the piece, he applied a match, with a
rapid motion, to the priming. An immense body of white smoke
rushed from the muzzle of the cannon, followed by a sheet of
vivid fire, until, losing its power, it yielded to the wind, and as it
rose from the water, spread like a cloud, and, passing through the
masts of the schooner, was driven far to leeward, and soon blended
in the mists which were swiftly scudding before the fresh breezes
of the ocean.

Although many curious eyes were watching this beautiful sight
from the cliffs, there was too little of novelty in the exhibition to
attract a single look of the crew of the schooner, from the more
important examination of the effect of the shot on their enemy.
Barnstable sprung lightly on a gun, and watched the instant when
the ball would strike, with keen interest, while long Tom threw
himself aside from the line of the smoke with a similar intention ;
holding one of his long arms extended towards his namesake, with
a finger on the vent, and supporting his frame by placing the hand
of the other on the deck, as his eyes glanced through an opposite
port-hole, in an attitude that most men might have despaired of
imitating with success.

•'There go the chips!" cried Barnstable. "Bravo! Master
Coffin, you never planted iron in the ribs of an Englishman with

l66 AMERICAN PROSE

more judgment. Let him have another piece of it ; and if he like
the sport, we'll play a game of long bowls with him ! "

"Aye, aye, sir," returned the cockswain, who, the instant he
witnessed the effects of his shot, had returned to superintend the
reloading of his gun ; "if he holds on half an hour longer. Til dub
him down to our own size, when we can close, and make an even
fight of it."

The drum of the Englishman was now for the first time heard
rattling across the waters, and echoing the call to quarters that had
already proceeded from the Ariel,

"Ah ! you have sent him to his guns !** said Barnstable; "we
shall now hear more of it ; wake him up, Tom — wake him
up."

" We shall start him on end, or put him to sleep altogether,
shortly," said the deliberate cockswain, who never allowed himself
to be at all hurried, even by his commander. " My shot are pretty
much like a shoal of porpoises, and commonly sail in each other's
wake. Stand by — heave her breech forward — so ; get out of that,
you damned young reprobate, and let my harpoon alone ! "

"What are you at, there. Master Coffin?" cried Barnstable;
" are you tongue-tied ? '*

" Here's one of the boys skylarkmg with my harpoon in the lee-
scuppers, and by-and-by, when I shall want it most, there'll be a
no-man's-land to hunt for it in."

" Never mind the boy, Tom ; send him aft here to me and I'll
polish his behavior ; give the Englishman some more iron."

" I want the little villain to pass up my cartridges," returned the
angry old seaman ; " but if you'll be so good, sir, as to hit him a
crack or two, now and then, as he goes by you to the magazine,
the monkey will learn his manners and the schooner's work will be
all the better done for it. A young herring-faced monkey ! to
meddle with a tool ye don't know the use of. If your parents had
spent more of their money on your edication, and less on your
outfit, you'd ha' been a gentleman to what ye are now."

" Hurrah ! Tom, hurrah ! " cried Barnstable, a little impatiently ;
" is your namesake never to open his throat again ! "

"Aye, aye, sir; all ready," grumbled the cockswain; "depress
a little ; so — so ; a damned young baboon-behaved curmudgeon ;

JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 1 67

overhaul that forward fall more; stand by with your match —
but 1*11 pay him ! — fire ! " This was the actual commencement
of the fight ; for as the shot of Tom Coffin travelled, as he had inti-
mated, very much in the same direction, their enemy found the
sport becoming too hot to be endured in silence, and the report
of the second gun from the Ariel was instantly followed by that
of the whole broadside of the Alacrity, The shot of the cutter
flew in a very good direction, but her guns were too light to give
them efficiency at that distance ; and as one or two were heard to
strike against the bends of the schooner, and fall back, innocuously,
into the water, the cockswain, whose good-humor became gradually
restored as the combat thickened, remarked with his customary
apathy :

" Them count for no more than love-taps — does the English-
man think that we are firing salutes ! "

" Stir him up, Tom ! every blow you give him will help to open
his eyes," cried Barnstable, rubbing his hands with glee, as he
witnessed the success of his efforts to close.

Thus far the cockswain and his crew had the fight, on the part
of the Ariely altogether to themselves, the men who were stationed
at the smaller and shorter guns standing in perfect idleness by their
sides ; but in ten or fifteen minutes the commander of the Alacrity,
who had been staggered by the weight of the shot that had struck
him, found that it was no longer in his power to retreat, if he
wished it ; when he decided on the only course that was left for a
brave man to pursue, and steered boldly in such a direction as
would soonest bring him in contact with his enemy, without expos-
ing his vessel to be raked by his fire. Barnstable watched each
movement of his foe with eagle eyes, and when the vessel had got
within a lessened distance, he gave the order for a general fire to
be opened. The action now grew warm and spirited on both sides.
The power of the wind was counteracted by the constant explosion
of the cannon ; and, instead of driving rapidly to leeward, a white
canopy of curling smoke hung above the Ariel , or rested on the
water, lingering in her wake, so as to mark the path by which she
was approaching to a closer and still deadlier struggle. The shouts
of the young sailors, as they handled their instruments of death,
became more animated and fierce, while the cockswain pursued

1 68 AMERICAN PROSE

his occupation with the silence and skill of one who labored in a
regular vocation. Barnstable was unusually composed and quiet,
maintaining the grave deportment of a commander on whom rested
the fortunes of the contest, at the same time that his dark eyes
were dancing with the fire of suppressed animation.

" Give it them ! " he occasionally cried, in a voice that might
be heard amid the bellowing of the cannon ; " never mind their
cordage, my lads ; drive home their bolts, and make your marks
below their ridge-ropes."

In the mean time the Englishman played a manful game.

He had suffered a heavy loss by the distant cannonade, which
no metal he possessed could retort upon his enemy ; but he
struggled nobly to repair the error in judgment with which he had
begun the contest. The two vessels gradually drew nigher to each
other, until they both entered into the common cloud created by
their fire, which thickened and spread around them in such a man-
ner as to conceal their dark hulls from the gaze of the curious and
interested spectators on the cliffs. The heavy reports of the can-
non were now mingled with the rattling of muskets and pistols^ and
streaks of fire might be seen glancing like flashes of lightning
through the white cloud which enshrouded the combatants ; and
many minutes of painful uncertainty followed, before the deeply-
interested soldiers, who were gazing at the scene, discovered on
whose banners victory had alighted.

We shall follow the combatants into their misty wreath, and
display to the reader the events as they occurred.

The fire of the Ariel was much the most quick and deadly, both
because she had suffered less, and her men were less exhausted ;
and the cutter stood desperately on to decide the combat, after
grappling, hand to hand. Barnstable anticipated her intention,
and well understood her commander's reason for adopting this
course ; but he was not a man to calculate coolly his advantages,
when pride and daring invited him to a more severe trial. Accord-
ingly, he met the enemy half-way, and as the vessels rushed to-
gether, the stern of the schooner was secured to the bows of the
cutter, by the joint efforts of both parties. The voice of the Eng-
lish commander was now plainly to be heard, in the uproar, calling
to his men to follow him.

JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 165

" Away there, boarders ! repel boarders on the starboard
quarter ! " shouted Barnstable through his trumpet.

This was the last order that the gallant young sailor gave with
this instrument ; for, as he spoke, he cast it from him, and, seizing
his sabre, flew to the spot where the enemy was about to make his
most desperate effort. The shouts, execrations, and tauntings of
the combatants, now succeeded to the roar of the cannon, which
could be used no longer with effect, though the fight was still
maintained with spirited discharges of the small-arms.

"Sweep him from his decks !" cried the English commander^ as
he appeared on his own bulwarks, surrounded by a dozen of his
bravest men ; " drive the rebellious dogs into the sea ! "

"Away there, marines !" retorted Barnstable, firing his pistol at
the advancing enemy ; " leave not a man of them to sup his grog
again.**

The tremendous and close volley that succeeded this order,
nearly accomplished the command of Barnstable to the letter, and
the commander of the Alacrity, perceiving that he stood alone,
reluctantly fell back on the deck of his own vessel, in order to
bring on his men once more.

" Board her ! gray-beards and boys, idlers and all ! " shouted
Barnstable, springing in advance of his crew ; a powerful arm
arrested the movement of the dauntless seaman, and before he had
time to recover himself, he was drawn violently back to his own
vessel by the irresistible grasp of his cockswain.

"The fellow's in his flurry," said Tom, " and it wouldn't be wise
to go within reach of his flukes ; but Pll just step ahead and give
him a set with my harpoon."

Without waiting for a reply, the cockswain reared his tall frame
on the bulwarks, and was in the attitude of stepping on board of
his enemy, when a sea separated the vessels, and he fell with a
heavy dash of the waters into the ocean. As twenty muskets and
pistols were discharged at the instant he appeared, the crew of
the -<4/7>/ supposed his fall to be occasioned by his wounds, and
were rendered doubly fierce by the sight, and the cry of their
commander to —

" Revenge long Tom ! board her ! long Tom or death ! "

They threw themselves forward in irresistible numbers, and forced

I70 AMERICAN PROSE

a passage, with much bloodshed, to the forecastle of the Alacrity,
The Englishman was overpowered, but still remained undaunted
— he rallied his crew, and bore up most gallantly to the fray.
Thrusts of pikes and blows of sabres were becoming close and
deadly, while muskets and pistols were constantly discharged by
those who were kept at a distance by the pressure of the throng of
closer combatants.

Barnstable led his men in advance, and became a mark of pecul-
iar vengeance to his enemies, as they slowly yielded before his
vigorous assaults. Chance had placed the two commanders on
opposite sides of the cutter's deck, and the victory seemed to incline
toward either party, wherever these daring officers directed the
struggle in person. But the Englishman, perceiving that the
ground he maintained in person was lost elsewhere, made an
effort to restore the battle, by changing his position, followed by
one or two of his best men. A marine, who preceded him, leveled
his musket within a few feet of the head of the American com-
mander, and was about to fire, when Merry glided among the
combatants, and passed his dirk into the body of the man, who
fell at the blow ; shaking his piece, with horrid imprecations, the
wounded soldier prepared to deal his vengeance on his youthful
assailant, when the fearless boy leaped within its muzzle, and
buried his own keen weapon in his heart.

" Hurrah ! " shouted the unconscious Barnstable, from the edge
of the quarter-deck, where, attended by a few men, he was driving
all before him. " Revenge ! — long Tom and victory ! "

" We have them ! " exclaimed the Englishman ; " handle your
pikes ! we have them between two fires."

The battle would probably have terminated very differently from
what previous circumstances had indicated, had not a wild-looking
figure appeared in the cutter*s channels at that moment, issuing
from the sea, and gaining the deck at the same instant. It was
long Tom, with his iron visage rendered fierce by his previous dis-
comfiture, and his grizzled locks drenched with the briny element
from which he had risen, looking like Neptune with his trident.
Without speaking, he poised his harpoon, and, with a powerful
effort, pinned the unfortunate Englishman to the mast of his own
vessel.

JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 171

" Stam all ! " cried Tom by a sort of instinct, when the blow
was struck ; and catching up the musket of the fallen marine, he
dealt out terrible and fatal blows with its butt on all who ap-
proached him, utteriy disregarding the use of the bayonet on its
muzzle. The unfortunate commander of the Alacrity brandished
his sword with frantic gestures, while his eyes rolled in horrid
wildness, when he writhed for an instant in his passing agonies,
and then, as his head dropped lifeless upon his gored breast, he
hung against the spar, a spectacle of dismay to .his crew. A few
of the Englishmen stood chained to the spot in silent horror at the
sight, but most of them fled to their lower deck, or hastened to
conceal themselves in the secret parts of the vessel, leaving to the
Americans the undisputed possession of the Alacrity.

\^The Pilot, a Tale of the Sea, 1823, chapter 18.]

WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT

[William Hickling Prescott was born in Salem, May 4, 1796, and died in
Boston, Jan. 28, 1859. His life was quiet and uneventful. He was a student
and a man of letters, and he was also greatly confined by the results of an acci-
dent to one of his eyes. His historical work was carried on against tremendous
difficulties : he could hardly read at all and wrote only on a noctograph. In
spite of all these obstacles he published Ferdinand and Isabella, in 1 838 ; The
Conquest of Mexico^ in 1843 > The Conquest of Peru, in 1847 » ^"^^ Philip the
Second, in 1855-58, as well as a volume of essays. Flis works were eagerly
read ; they also gave him a very high reputation among scholars. He was
elected corresponding member of the French Institute and of the Royal
Society of Berlin, and received the honorary degree of D.C.L. from Oxford.
A Life of Prescott (1864) was written by his friend George Ticknor.]

The chief merits of Prescott as a historian are breadth and
accuracy of information and impartiality of judgment. As a
writer he has qualities which harmonize well with such character-
istics : he has the classic excellencies of style. He is not so very
suggestive, animated, sympathetic : his virtues are strength, out-
line, form.

And these excellencies Prescott has to a very considerable degree.
He was passionate for knowledge of his subject, for. power. Sparks
had already shown American students the necessity of exhaustive
material. History was no longer a matter for any honest gentle-
man who felt impelled to write, as Gibbon remarked, and had the
needful paper and ink. Bancroft, Prescott, Motley, Parkman, were,
first and foremost, investigators. They not only accumulated in
their libraries everything in print which bore on their subjects, but
they had their copyists at work in the archives of all Europe. They
wrote from contemporary authorities, when they could get them,
and always wrote as original students. Prescott was the great
champion of footnotes. Almost one-third of his good-sized vol-
umes was made up of titles and quotations, which, as they were in
Spanish, were entirely unintelligible to the greater number of those
who admired his romance and his style.

172

WILLIAM HICK LING PRESCOTT 1 73

Prescott was master of his voluminous material. But not only
that, he had also in mind a very definite conception of what form
that material was to take. He was no Barante, to write as his own
authorities would have written. Nor did he imagine, like Carlyle,
that he was part and parcel of that which he was describing. He
saw how things had gone, even if sometimes from a considerable
distance, and his idea was to put them as he saw them, with a firm,
clear outline, which would bring them rightly to the mind of one
who had not had his opportunities. But not only did he see every-
thing clearly, he saw everything in relation ; he conceived his sub-
jects as wholes, saw each part as a part, not for itself. He had not
only a sense of outline, but a sense of form.

It is true that in presenting the conception as it took shape in his
mind, Prescott was not, we think, very happy. He lived toward
the beginning of an effort in the writing of English prose which
he may not have understood, may not have appreciated, for he
continued the traditions to which he had been accustomed. Thus
he calmly uses the most general word, and shuns anything that
might possibly be striking, and so interfere with a becoming
dignity. Had he really had an original sense of style, he would
have expressed himself with some originality. As it was, he con-
tinued to write as it had been the habit of historians to write, and
he achieved a very striking success.

Prescott has been called a romantic historian, and so in a certain
sense he was, though not, as we have seen, so far as style is con-
cerned. His time was a romantic time, and historians felt roman-
tic, as much as anybody else. Macaulay announced that the
" truly great historian would reclaim those materials which the
novelist had appropriated." Carlyle said that any one who read
" the inscrutable Book of Nature as if it were a merchant's Ledger,
is justly suspected of having never seen that Book." Thierry com-
posed his Merovingians with occasional shouts of " Pharamond,
Pharamond, we have battled with the sword ! " Barante, out of
the Burgundian chronicles, wove eleven volumes of mediaeval tap-
estry, and concealed himself behind it. In Germany the learned
Niebuhr was dazzled by the fascination of his lays of ancient Rome.
In America (or, more correctly, in Spain) Washington Irving could
not write his Conquest of Granada without imagining a Fray Aga-

174 AMERICAN PROSE

pida, to whom it might be attributed. Prescott, too, felt the influ-
ence, although he was a different man from any of these, with aims
different from theirs.

Prescott's ideal was not romantic : it was the more serene, more
severe, classic ideal. Still there is no doubt that he liked to think
of his subjects as being romantic in themselves ; he thought of
Spaniards and Moors, adelantados and conquerors, Aztecs and
Peruvians, as being naturally romantic, as may be seen from the
prefaces to Ferdinand and Isabella and The Conquest of Peru, So
they doubtless were at that time ; they were, in fact, a part of the
undoubted possession of the romancer of Prescott's day. But
with plenty of local color in his subjects, Prescott had not more
than a general feeling for romantic quality. M. de Heredia's
"ivres d'un reve h^roique et brutal" has a romantic idealism
which cannot be found in the whole Conquest of Mexico, Kings-
ley's " Fat Carbajal charged our cannon like an elephant " has a
romantic realism which cannot be found in all the Peru, A roman-
tic mind loses much, but it is apt to get the play of real life. This
Prescott generally missed : he was always viewing the matter as a
whole, and rarely got down to particulars.

If, then, we turn to Prescott nowadays for romance, or if we
study him for his technique, we shall find only what long since
had its day. If we come to him from the post-Darwinian
historians, we may think him superficial and inattentive to matters
of importance. But even from these mistaken standpoints we
shall hardly be able to read one of his histories without the feeling
that he is a man of letters of distinguished power. He stood be-
tween great traditions and a great future ; he certainly had some
of the weaknesses of those who had gone before as well as some
of their merits ; and certainly, too, he missed some of the merits of
those who were to come. On the other hand, he avoided the
great faults of romanticism, and presents to us a singularly attrac-
tive combination of classic excellencies.

Edward Everett Hale, Jr.

WILLIAM HICK LING PRE SCOTT 1 75

THE BATTLE OF OTUMBA

As the army was climbing the mountain steeps which shut in
the valley of Otompan, the vedettes came in with the intelligence,
that a powerful body was encamped on the other side, apparently
awaiting their approach. The intelligence was soon confirmed by
their own eyes, as they turned the crest of the sierra, and saw
spread out, below, a mighty host, filling up the whole depth of the
valley, and giving to it the appearance, from the white cotton mail
of the warriors, of being covered with snow. It consisted of levies
from the surrounding country, and especially the populous territory
of Tezcuco, drawn together at the instance of Cuitlahua, Monte-
zuma's successor, and now concentrated on this point to dispute
the passage of the Spaniards. Every chief of note had taken the
field with his whole array gathered under his standard, proudly
displaying all the pomp and rude splendor of his miHtary equip-
ment. . As far as the eye could reach, were to be seen shields and
waving banners, fantastic helmets, forests of shining spears, the
bright feather-mail of the chief, and the coarse cotton panoply of
his followers, all mingled together in wild confusion, and tossing to
and fro Uke the billows of a troubled ocean. It was a sight to fill
the stoutest heart among the Christians with dismay, heightened
by the previous expectation of soon reaching the friendly land
which was to terminate their wearisome pilgrimage. Even Cortes,
as he contrasted the tremendous array before him with his own
diminished squadrons, wasted by disease and enfeebled by hunger
and fatigue, could not escape the conviction that his last hour had
arrived.

But his was not the heart to despond ; and he gathered strength
from the very extremity of his situation. He had no room for
hesitation ; for there was no alternative left to him. To escape
was impossible. He could not retreat on the capital, from which
he had been expelled. He must advance, — cut through the enemy,
or perish. He hastily made his dispositions for the fight. He
gave his force as broad a front as possible, protecting it on each
flank by his little body of horse, now reduced to twenty. Fortu-
nately, he had not allowed the invalids, for the last two days, to

176 AMERICAN PROSE

mount behind the riders, from a desire to spare the horses, so that
these were now in tolerable condition ; and, indeed, the whole
army had been refreshed by halting, as we have seen, two nights
and a day in the same place, a delay, however, which had allowed
the enemy time to assemble in such force to dispute its progress.

Cortes instructed his cavaliers not to part with their lances, and
to direct them at the face. The infantry were to thrust, not strike,
with their swords ; passing them, at once, through the bodies of
their enemies. They were, above all, to aim at the leaders, as
the general well knew how much depends on the life of the com-
mander in the wars of barbarians, whose want of subordination
makes them impatient of any control but that to which they are
accustomed.

He ^en addressed to his troops a few words of encouragement,
as customary with him on the eve of an engagement. He reminded
them of the victories they had won with odds nearly as discourag-
ing as the present ; thus establishing the superiority of science
and discipline over numbers. Numbers, indeed, were of j\o ac-
count, where the arm of the Almighty was on their side. And he
bade them have full confidence, that He, who had carried them
safely through so many perils, would not now abandon them and
his own good cause, to perish by the hand of the infidel. His ad-
dress was brief, for he read in their looks that settled resolve which
rendered words unnecessary. The circumstances of their position
spoke more forcibly to the heart of every soldier than any elo-
quence could have done, filling it with that feeling of desperation
which makes the weak arm strong, and turns the coward into a
hero. After they had earnestly commended themselves, therefore,
to the protection of God, the Virgin, and St. James, Cortes led
his battalions straight against the enemy.

It was a solemn moment, — that, in which the devoted little band,
with steadfast countenances, and their usual intrepid step, descended
on the plain, to be swallowed up, as it were, in the vast ocean of
their enemies. The latter rushed on with impetuosity to meet
them, making the mountains ring to their discordant yells and
battle-cries, and sending forth volleys of stones and arrows which
for a moment shut out the light of day. But, when the leading
files of the two armies closed, the superiority of the Christians was

WILLIAM NICK LING FRESCO TT 1 7?

felt, as their antagonists, falling back before the charges of cavalry,
were thrown into confusion by their own numbers who pressed on
them from behind. The Spanish infantry followed up the blow,
and a wide lane was opened in the ranks of the enemy, who,
receding on all sides, seemed willing to allow a free passage for
their opponents. But it was to return on them with accumulated
force, as rallying they poured upon the Christians, enveloping the
little army on all sides, which, with its bristling array of long
swords and javelins, stood firm, — in the words of a contemporary,
— like an islet against which the breakers, roaring and surging,
spend their fury in vain. The struggle was desperate of man
against man. The Tlascalan seemed to renew his strength, as he
fought almost in view of his own native hills ; as did the Spaniard,
with the horrible doom of the captive before his eyes. Well
did the cavaliers do their duty on that day; charging, in little
bodies of four and five abreast, deep into the enemy's ranks, rid-
ing over the broken files, and by this temporary advantage giving
strength and courage to the infantry. Not a lance was there which
did not reek with the blood of the infidel. Among the rest, the
young captain Sandoval is particularly commemorated for his dar-
ing prowess. Managing his fiery steed with easy horsemanship,
he darted, when least expected, into the thickest of the milee,
overturning the stanchest warriors, and rejoicing in danger, as if
it were his natural element.

But these gallant displays of heroism served only to ingulf the
Spaniards deeper and deeper in the mass of the enemy, with
scarcely any more chance of cutting their way through his dense
and interminable battalions, than of hewing a passage with their
swords through the mountains. Many of the Tlascalans and some
of the Spaniards had fallen, and not one but had been wounded.
Cortes himself had received a second cut on the head, and his
horse was so much injured that he was compelled to dismount,
and take one from the baggage train, a strong-boned animal, who
carried him well through the turmoil of the day. The contest
had now lasted several hours. The sun rode high in the heavens,
and shed an intolerable fervor over the plain. The Christians,
weakened by previous sufferings, and faint with loss of blood, be-
gan to relax in their desperate exertions. Their enemies, con-

1 78 AMERICAN PROSE

stantly supported by fresh relays from the rear, were still in good
heart, and, quick to perceive their advantage, pressed with re-
doubled force on the Spaniards. The horse fell back, crowded
on the foot ; and the latter, in vain seeking a passage amidst the
dusky throngs of the enemy, who now closed up the rear, were
thrown into some disorder. The tide of battle was setting rapidly
against the Christians. The fate of the day would soon be de-
cided ; and all that now remained for them seemed to be to sell
their lives as dearly as possible.

At this critical moment, Cortes, whose restless eye had been
roving round the field in quest of any object that might offer him
the means of arresting the coming ruin, rising in his stirrups, de-
scried at a distance, in the midst of the throng, the chief who from
his dress and military cortege he knew must be the commander of
the barbarian forces. He was covered with a rich surcoat of feather-
work ; and a panache of beautiful plume?, gorgeously set in gold
and precious stones, floated above his head. Rising above this,
aiid attached to his back, between the shoulders, was a short staff
bearing a golden net for a banner, — the singular, but customary,
symbol of authority for an Aztec commander. The cacique, whose
name was Cihuaca, was borne on a litter, and a body of young war-
riors, whose gay and ornamented dresses showed them to be the
flower of the Indian nobles, stood round as a guard of his person
and the sacred emblem.

The eagle eye of Cortes no sooner fell on this personage, than
it lighted up with triumph. Turning quickly round to the cava-
liers at his side, among whom were Sandoval, Olid, Alvarado, and
Avila, he pointed out the chief, exclaiming, " There is our mark !
Follow and support me ! " Then crying his war-cry, and striking
his iron heel into his weary steed, he plunged headlong into the
thickest of the press. His enemies fell back, taken by surprise
and daunted by the ferocity of the attack. Those who did not
were pierced through with his lance, or borne down by the weight
of his charger. The cavaliers followed close in the rear. On
they swept, with the fury of a thunderbolt, cleaving the solid ranks
asunder, strewing their path with the dying and the dead, and
bounding over every obstacle in their way. In a few minutes
they were in the presence of the Indian commander, and Cort^sj,

WILLIAM HICK LING PRE SCOTT ' 1 79

overturning his supporters, sprang forward with the strength of a
lion, and, striking him through with his lance, hurled him to the
ground. A young cavalier, Juan de Salamanca, who had kept
close by his generaPs side, quickly dismounted and despatched
the fallen chief. Then tearing away his banner, he presented it
to Cortes, as a trophy to which he had the best claim. It was all
the work of a moment. The guard, overpowered by the sudden-
ness of the onset, made little resistance, but, flying, communicated
their own panic to their comrades. The tidings of the loss soon
spread over the field. The Indians, filled with consternation, now
thought only of escape. In their blind terror, their numbers aug-
mented their confusion. They trampled on one another, fancying
it was the enemy in their rear.

The Spaniards and Tlascalans were not slow to avail themselves
of the marvellous change in their affairs. Their fatigue, their
wounds, hunger, thirst, all were forgotten in the eagerness for
vengeance ; and they followed up the flying foe, dealing death at
every stroke, and taking ample retribution for all they had suffered
in the bloody marshes of Mexico. Long did they pursue, till, the
enemy having abandoned the field, they returned sated with
slaughter to glean the booty which he had left. It was great, for
the ground was covered with the bodies of chiefs, at whom the
Spaniards, in obedience to the general's instructions, had particu-
larly aimed ; and their dresses displayed all the barbaric pomp of
ornament, in which the Indian warrior delighted. When his men
had thus indemnified themselves, in some degree, for their late
reverses, Cortes called them again under their banners ; and, after
offering up a grateful acknowledgement to the Lord of Hosts for
their miraculous preservation, they renewed their march across the
now deserted valley. The sun was declining in the heavens, but,
before the shades of evening had gathered around, they reached
an Indian temple on an eminence, which afforded a strong and
commodious position for the night.

Such was the femous battle of Otompan, — or Otumba, as com-
monly called, from the Spanish corruption of the name. It was
fought on the eighth of July, 1520. The whole amount of the
Indian force is reckoned by Castilian writers at two hundred
thousand ! that of the slain at twenty thousand I Those who

l8o AMERICAN PROSE

admit the first part of the estimate will find no difficulty in re-
ceiving the last. It is about as difficult to form an accurate cal-
culation of the numbers of a disorderly savage multitude, as of the
pebbles on the beach, or the scattered leaves in autumn. Yet it
was, undoubtedly, one of the most remarkable victories ever
achieved in the New World. And this, not merely on account of
the disparity of the forces, but of their unequal condition. For
the Indians were in all their strength, while the Christians were
wasted by disease, famine, and long protracted sufferings ; without
cannon or fire-arms, and deficient in the military apparatus which
had so often struck terror into their barbarian foe, — deficient
even in the terrors of a victorious name. But they had disci-
pline on their side, desperate resolve, and implicit confidence in
their commander. That they should have triumphed against
such odds furnishes an inference of the same kind as that estab-
lished by the victories of the European over the semi-civilized
hordes of Asia.

Yet even here all must not be referred to superior discipline
and tactics. For the battle would certainly have been lost, had it
not been for the fortunate death of the Indian general. And,
although the selection of the victim may be called the result of
calculation, yet it was by the most precarious chance that he was
thrown in the way of the Spaniards. It is, indeed, one among
many examples of the influence of fortune in determining the fate
of military operations. The star of Cortes was in the ascendant.
Had it been otherwise, not a Spaniard would have survived that
day to tell the bloody tale of the battle of Otumba.

[From History of the Conquest of Mexico^ 1843, book v, chapter 4.]

THE PILLAGE OF CUZCO

It was late in the afternoon when the Conquerors came in sight
of Cuzco. The descending sun was streaming his broad rays full
on the imperial city, where many an altar was dedicated to his
worship. The low ranges of buildings, showing in his beams like
so many lines of silvery light, filled up the bosom of the valley
and the lower slopes of the mountains, whose shadowy forms hung

WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT l8l

darkly over the fair city, as if to shield it from the menaced
profanation. It was so late, that Pizarro resolved to defer his
entrance till the following morning.

That night vigilant guard was kept in the camp, and the soldiers
slept on their arms. But it passed away without annoyance from
the enemy, and early on the following day, November 15, 1533,
Pizarro prepared for his entrance into the Peruvian capital.

The little army was formed into three divisions, of which the
centre, or " battle," as it w'as called, was led by the general. The
suburbs were thronged with a countless multitude of the natives,
who had flocked from the city and the surrounding country to
witness the showy, and, to them, startling pageant. All looked
with eager curiosity on the strangers, the fame of whose terrible
exploits had spread to the remotest parts of the empire. They
gazed with astonishment on their dazzling arms and fair com-
plexions, which seemed to proclaim them the true Children of the
Sun ; and they listened with feelings of mysterious dread, as the
trumpet sent forth its prolonged notes through the streets of
the capital, and the solid ground shook under the heavy tramp of
the cavalry.

The Spanish commander rode directly up the great square. It
was surrounded by low piles of buildings, among which were
several palaces of the Incas. One of these, erected by Huayna
Capac, was surmounted by a tower, while the ground-floor was
occupied by one or more immense halls, like those described in
Caxamalca, where the Peruvian nobles held their f^tes in stormy
weather. These buildings afforded convenient barracks for the
troops, though, during the first few weeks, they remained under
their tents in the open plaza, with their horses picketed by their
side, ready to repulse any insurrection of the inhabitants.

The capital of the Incas, though falling short of the El Dorado
which had engaged their credulous fancies, astonished the Span-
iards by the beauty of its edifices, the length and regularity of its
streets, and the good order and appearance of comfort, even
luxury, visible in its numerous population. It far surpassed all
they had yet seen in the New World. The population of the city is
computed by one of the Conquerors at two hundred thousand
inhabitants, and that of the suburbs at as many more. This

1 82 AMERICAN PROSE

account is not confirmed, as far as I have seen, by any othei
writer. But however it may be exaggerated, it is certain that
Cuzco was the metropoHs of a great empire, the residence of the
court and the chief nobility; frequented by the most skilful
mechanics and artisans of every description, who found a demand
for their ingenuity in the royal precincts; while the place was
garrisoned by a numerous soldiery, and was the resort, finally, of
emigrants from the most distant provinces. The quarters whence
this motley population came were indicated by their peculiar
dress, and especially their head-gear, so rarely found at all on the
American Indian, which, with its variegated colours, gave a pictu-
resque effect to the groups and masses in the streets. The habit-
ual order and decorum maintained in this multifarious assembly
showed the excellent police of the capital, where the only sounds
that disturbed the repose of the Spaniards were the noises of
feasting and dancing, which the natives, with happy insensibility,
constantly prolonged to a late hour of the night.

The edifices of the better sort — and they were very numerous
—r were of stone, or faced with stone. Among the principal were
the royal residences; as each sovereign built a new palace for
himself, covering, though low, a large extent of ground. The
walls were sometimes stained or painted with gaudy tints, and the
gates, we are assured, were sometimes of coloured marble. " In
the delicacy of the stone- work," says another of the Conquerors,
" the natives far excelled the Spaniards, though the roofs of their
dwellings, instead of tiles, were only of thatch, but put together
with the nicest art." The sunny climate of Cuzco did not require
a very substantial material for defence against the weather.

The most important building was the fortress, planted on a
solid rock, that rose boldly above the city. It was built of hewn
stone, so finely wrought that it was impossible to detect the line
of junction between the blocks ; and the approaches to it were
defended by three semicircular parapets, composed of such heavy
masses of rock, that it bore resemblance to the kind of work
known to architects as the Cyclopean. The fortress was raised to
a height rare in Peruvian architecture ; and fix)m the summit of
the tower the eye of the spectator ranged over a magnificent
prospect, in which the wild features of the mountain scenery,

WILLIAM HICK LING PRESCOTT 1 83

rocks, woods, and waterfalls, were mingled with the rich verdure
of the valley, and the shining city filling up the foreground, — all
blended in sweet harmony under the deep azure of a tropical sky.

The streets were long and narrow. They were arranged with
perfect regularity, crossing one another at right angles; and from
the great square diverged four principal streets connecting with
the high roads of the empire. The square itself, and many parts
of the city, were paved with a fine pebble. Through the heart of
the capital ran a river of pure water, if it might not be rather
termed a canal, the banks or sides of which, for the distance of
twenty leagues, were faced with stone. Across this stream,
bridges, constructed of similar broad flags, were thrown at
intervals, so as to afford an easy communication between the
different quarters of the capital.

The most sumptuous edifice in Cuzco, in the times of the Incas,
was undoubtedly the great temple dedicated to the Sun, which,
studded with gold plates, as already noticed, was surrounded by
convents and dormitories for the priests, with their gardens and
broad parterres sparkhng with gold. The exterior ornaments had
been already removed by the Conquerors, — all but the frieze of
gold, which, imbedded in the stones, still encircled the principal
building. It is probable that the tales of wealth, so greedily circu-
lated among the Spaniards, greatly exceeded the truth. If they
did not, the natives must have been very successful in concealing
their treasures from the invaders. Yet much still remained, not
only in the great House of the Sun, but in the inferior temples
which swarmed in the capital.

Pizarro, on entering Cuzco, had issued an order forbidding any
soldier to offer violence to the dwellings of the inhabitants. But
the palaces were numerous, and the troops lost no time in plunder-
ing them of their contents, as well as in despoiUng the religious
edifices. The interior decorations supplied them with consider-
able booty. They stripped off" the jewels and rich ornaments that
garnished the royal mummies in the temple of Coricancha. In-
dignant at the concealment of their treasures, they put the inhabi-
tants, in some instances, to the torture, and endeavoured to extort
from them a confession of their hiding-places. They invaded the
repose of the sepulchres, in which the Peruvians often deposited

1 84 AMERICAN PROSE

their valuable effects, and compelled the grave to give up its dead.
No place was left unexplored by the rapacious Conquerors ; and
they occasionally stumbled on a mine of wealth that rewarded
their labors.

In a cavern near the city they found a number of vases of pure
gold, richly embossed with the figures of serpents, locusts, and
other animals. Among the spoil were four golden llamas and ten
or twelve statues of women, some of gold, others of silver, " which
merely to see," says one of the Conquerors, with some naive te^
" was truly a great satisfaction." The gold was probably thin, for
the figures were all as large as life ; and several of them, being
reserved for the royal fifth, were not recast, but sent in their origi-
nal form to Spain. The magazines were stored with curious com-
modities; richly tinted robes of cotton and feather-work, gold
sandals, and slippers of the same material, for the women, and
dresses composed entirely of beads of gold. The grain and other
articles of food, with which the magazines were filled, were held
in contempt by the Conquerors, intent only on gratifying their lust
for gold. The time came when the grain would have been of far
more value.

Yet the amount of treasure in the capital did not equal the
sanguine expectations that had been formed by the Spaniards.
But the deficiency was supplied by the plunder which they had
collected at various places on their march. In one place, for
example, they met with ten planks or bars of solid silver, each
piece being twenty feet in length, one foot in breadth, and two
or three inches thick. They were intended to decorate the dwell-
ing of an Inca noble.

The whole mass of treasure was brought into a common heap,
as in Caxamalca ; and after some of the finer specimens had been
deducted for the Crown, the remainder was delivered to the Indian
goldsmiths to be melted down into ingots of a uniform standard.
The division of the spoil was made on the same principle as before.
There were four hundred and eighty soldiers, including the garri-
son of Xauxa, who were each to receive a share, that of the cavalry
being double that of the infantry. The amount of booty is stated
variously by those present at the division of it. According to
some, it considerably exceeded the ransom of Atahuallpa. Others

WILLIAM HICK LING PRESCOTT 1 85

state it as less. Pedro Pizarro says that each horseman got six
thousand pesos de oro, and each one of the infantry half that sum ;
though the same discrimination was made by Pizarro as before, in
respect to the rank of the parties, and their relative services. But
Sancho, the royal notary and secretary of the commander, esti-
mates the whole amount as far less, — not exceeding five hundred
and eighty thousand and two hundred pesos de orOy and two hun-
dred and fifteen thousand marks of silver. In the absence of the
official returns, it is impossible to determine which is correct. But
Sancho*s narrative is countersigned, it may be remembered, by
Pizarro and the royal treasurer Riquelme, and doubtless, there-
fore, shows the actual amount for which the Conquerors accounted
to the Crown.

Whichever statement we receive, the sum, combined with that
obtained at Caxamalca, might well have satisfied the cravings of
the most avaricious. The sudden influx of so much wealth, and
that, too, in so transferable a form, among a party of reckless ad-
venturers little accustomed to the possession of money, had its
natural effect. It supplied them with the means of gaming, so
strong and common a passion with the Spaniards, that it may be
considered a national vice. Fortunes were lost and won in a single
day, sufficient to render the proprietors independent for life ; and
many a desperate gamester, by an unlucky throw of the dice or
turn of the cards, saw himself stripped in a few hours of the fruits
of years of toil, and obliged to begin over again the business of
rapine. Among these, one in the cavalry service is mentioned,
named Leguizano, who had received as his share of the booty the
image of the Sun, which, raised on a plate of burnished gold,
spread over the walls in a recess of the great temple, and which,
for some reason or other, — perhaps, because of its superior fine-
ness, — was not recast like the other ornaments. This rich prize
the spendthrift lost in a single night ; whence it came to be a
proverb in Spain, Juega el Sol antes que amanezcay " Play away
the Sun before sunrise."

The effect of such a surfeit of the precious metals was instantly
felt on prices. The most ordinary articles were only to be had
for exorbitant sums. A quire of paper sold for ten pesos de
oro : a bottle of wine, for sixty ; a sword, for forty or fifty ; a cloak,

1 86 AMERICAN PROSE

for a hundred, — sometimes more ; a pair of shoes cost thirty or
forty pesos de oro, and a good horse could not be had for less than
twenty-five hundred. Some brought a still higher price. Every
article rose in value, as gold and silver, the representatives of all,
declined. Gold and silver, in short, seemed to be the only things
in Cuzco that were not wealth. Yet there were some few wise
enough to return contented with their present gains to their native
country. Here their riches brought them consideration and com-
petence, and, while they excited the envy of their countrymen,
stimulated them to seek their own fortunes in the like path of
adventure.

[From History of the Conquest of Peru, 1847, book iii, chapter 8.J

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

[Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston, May 25, 1803. His father,
who was pastor of the First Church there, died in 181 1, leaving the family in
reduced circumstances. The boy's education, however, was not neglected;
not only was he sent to the Latin School and afterwards to Harvard College,
but he breathed in the society of his mother and her friends an atmosphere of
high moral and religious tension. While at college he taught school during
the holidays, and after his graduation he employed a part of his time in teach-
ing, while studying for the ministry. In 1829 he was called to the Second
Church in Boston, a charge which he resigned after a few years on the
ground of scruples that had arisen in his mind about the practice of vol-
untary prayer and of the communion. His health was not good, and a
voyage to the Mediterranean was recommended. This journey, like the others
he afterwards undertook to Europe, made less impression upon his imagination
or opinions than might have been expected. His chief interest in travelling
was to meet a few distinguished men, whose works he already valued —
Coleridge, Wordsworth, Landor, De Quincey, and Carlyle, with the last of
whom he formed a strong literary friendship. On his return home he began
to deliver lectures, at first on subjects connected with natural science; and lect-
uring continued to be his chief means of earning money for the rest of his
life. In 1834 he went to live in Concord, Mass., which ever after remained
his home. There he became the centre of a literary circle which included
Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, and Margaret Fuller, to whose organ, The Dial,
he occasionally contributed. He died April 27, 1882, a partial loss of mem-
ory having been a pathetic incident of his declining years.

Emerson's principal publications were as follows : Nature^ 1 836. The
American Scholar , 1837. Essay Sj^xsi series, 1841; second series, 1844. Rep-
resentative Men, 1850. English Traits^ 1856. Conduct of Life ^ i860. Society
and Solitude^ 1870. Letters and Social Aims ^ '875. His correspondence with
Carlyle was afterwards edited by C. E. Norton. The best life of Emerson is
that by J. E. Cabot.]

Those who knew Emerson, or who stood so near to his time
and to his circle that they caught some echo of his personal influ-
ence, did not judge of him merely as a poet and philosopher, nor
identify his efficacy with that of his writings. His friends and neigh-
bors, the congregations he preached to in his younger days, the

187

1 88 AMERICAN PROSE

audiences that afterwards listened to his lectures, all agreed in a
veneration for his person that had nothing to do with their under-
standing or acceptance of his opinions. They flocked to him and
listened to his word, not so much for the sake of its absolute
meaning as for the atmosphere of candor, purity, and serenity
that hung about it, as about a sort of sacred music. They felt
themselves in the presence of a rare and beautiful spirit, who was
in communication with a higher world. More than the truth his
teaching might express, they valued the sense it gave them of a
truth that was inexpressible. They became aware, if we may say
so, of the ultra-violet rays of his spectrum, of the inaudible highest
notes of his gamut, too pure and thin for common ears.

Yet the personal impression Emerson may have produced is but
a small part of his claim to general recognition. This must ulti-
mately rest on his published works, on his collected essays and
poems. His method of composition was to gather jniscellaneous
thoughts together in note-books and journals, and then, as occasion
offered, to cull those that bore on the same subject or could serve
to illustrate the same general train of thought, and to piece a lect-
ure out of them. This method has the important advantage of
packing the page with thought and observation, so that it deserves
to be reread and pondered ; but it is incompatible with continuity
of thought or unity and permanence of impression. A style of
point and counterpoint, where the emphasis attained by condensa-
tion and epigram is not reserved for the leading ideas, but gives an
artificial vividness to every part, must tend to make the whole in-
distinct and inconclusive. The fact that the essays were lectures
led to another characteristic which is now to be regretted. They
are peppered by local allusions and illustrations drawn from the
literary or scientific novelties of the hour. These devices may have
served to keep an audience awake, but they were always unworthy
of the subject, and they now distract the reader, who loses the
perennial interest of the thought in the quaintness or obscurity of
the expression. Yet, in spite of faults, Emerson's style is well fitted
to his purpose and genius : it has precision, picturesqueness, often
a great poetic beauty and charm, with the eloquence that comes
of ingenuous conviction and of dwelling habitually among high
things. The very element of oddity, the arbitrary choice of quota-

RALPH WALDO EMEkSON 1 89

tions and illustrations, is not without its charm, suggesting, as it
does, the author's provincial solitude and personal savor. Taken
separately, and with the sympathetic cooperation of the reader's
fancy, his pages are inspiring and eloquent in a high degree, the
best paragraphs being sublime without obscurity, and convincing
without argumentation.

The themes treated seem at first sight various — biography, liter-
ary criticism, natural science, morals, and metaphysics. But the
initiated reader will find that the same topics and turns of thought
recur under every title : we may expect under " Friendship " as
much moral cosmology as under " Fate,*' and under " Science "
as many oriental anecdotes as under " Worship." The real subject
is everywhere the same. As a preacher might under every text
enforce the same lessons of the gospel, so Emerson traces in every
sphere the same spiritual laws of experience — compensation, con-
tinuity, the self-expression of the soul in the forms of nature and
^ of society, until she finally recognizes herself in her own work, and
sees its beneficence and beauty. The power of thought, or rather,
perhaps, of imagination, is his single theme : its power first to
make the world, then to understand it, and finally to rise above it.
All nature is an embodiment of our native fancy, and all history a
drama, in which the innate possibilities of our spirit are enacted
and realized. While the conflict of life and the shocks of experi-
ence seem to bring us face to face with an alien and overwhelming
power, reflection can humanize and rationalize the power by dis-
covering its laws ; and with this recognition of the rationality of
all things comes the sense of their beauty and order. The very
destruction which nature seems to prepare for our special hopes is
thus seen to be the victory of our deeper and impersonal interests.
To awaken in us this spiritual insight, an elevation of mind which
is an act at once of comprehension and of worship, to substitute
it for lower passions and more servile forms of intelligence — that
is Emerson's constant effort. All his resources of illustration, of
observation, rhetoric, and paradox, are used to deepen and clarify
this sort of wisdom.

Such thought is essentially the same that is found in the German
rofaiantic or idealistic philosophers, with whom Emerson's affinity
is remarkable, all the more as he seems to have borrowed little or

190 AMERICAN PROSE

nothing from their works. The resemblance may be accounted,
for, perhaps, by the similar conditions that existed in the religious
thought of that time in Germany and in New England. In both
countries the abandonment, on the part of the new school of
philosophy, of all allegiance to the traditional theology, coincided
with a vague enthusiasm for science and with a quickening of
national and humanitarian hopes. The critics of human nature,
during the eighteenth century, had shown how much men's ideas
of things depended on their natural predispositions, on the char-
acter of their senses, and the habits of their intelligence. Seizing
upon this thought, and exaggerating it, the romantic philosophers
attributed to the spirit of man that omnipotence which had
belonged to God, and felt that in this way they were reasserting
the supremacy of mind over matter and establishing it upon a safe
and rational basis. The Germans were great system-makers, and
Emerson cannot rival them in the sustained effort of thought by
which they sought to reinterpret every sphere of being according
to their chosen principles. On the other hand, those who are
distrustful of a too systematic and complete philosophy, especially
of this transcendental sort, will regard it as a fortunate incapacity
in Emerson that he was never able to trace out and defend the
universal implications of any of his ideas, and never wrote, for in-
stance, the book he had once planned on the law of compensation.
A happy instinct made him always prefer a fresh statement on a
fresh subject, and deterred him from repeating or defending his
trains of thought. A suggestion once given, the spirit once aroused
to speculation, a glimpse once gained of some ideal harmony, he
preferred to descend again to common sense and to touch the
earth for a moment before another flight. The faculty of idealiza-
tion was in itself what he valued. Philosophy for him was rather
a moral energy flowering into sprightliness of thought than a body
of serious and defensible doctrines. And in practising transcen-
dental speculation only in this poetic and sporadic fashion,
Emerson was perhaps retaining its truest value and avoiding its
greatest danger. He secured the freedom and fertility of his in-
telligence, and did not allow one conception of law or one hint
of harmony to sterilize the mind and prevent the subsequent birth
of other ideas, no less just and inspiring than itself. For we are

RALPH WALDO EMERSON I9I

not dealing at all in such a philosophy with matters of fact, or with
such verifiable truths as exclude their opposites, but only with the
art of conception and the various forms in which reflection, like a
poet, can compose and recompose human experience.

If we ask ourselves what was Emerson's relation to the scientific
and religious movements of his time, and what place he may claim
in the history of opinion, we must answer that he belonged very
little to the past, very little to the present, and almost wholly to
that abstract sphere into which mystical and philosophic aspiration
has carried a few men in all ages. The religious tradition in
which he was reared was that of Puritanism, but of a Puritanism
which, retaining its moral intensity and metaphysical abstractness,
had minimized its doctrinal expression and become Unitarian.
Emerson was indeed the Psyche of Puritanism, " the latest born
and fairest vision far ** of all that " faded hierarchy.'* A Puritan
whose religion was all poetry, a poet whose only pleasure was
thought, he showed in his life and personality the meagreness,
the constraint, the conscious aloofness and consecration which
belonged to his clerical ancestors, while his personal spirit ranged
abroad over the fields of history and nature, gathering what ideas
it might, and singing its little snatches of inspired song.

The traditional element was thus rather an external and un-
essential contribution to Emerson's mind ; he had the professional
tinge, the decorum, and the distinction of an old-fashioned divine ;
he had also the habit of writing sermons, and he had the national
pride and hope of a religious people that felt itself providentially
chosen to establish a free and godly commonwealth in a new
world. For the rest he separated himself from the ancient creed
of the community with a sense rather of relief than of regret. A
literal belief in Christian doctrines repelled him as unspiritual, as
manifesting no understanding of the meaning which, as allegories,
those doctrines might have to a philosophic and poetical spirit.
Although as a clergyman he was at first in the habit of referring to
the Bible and its lessons as to a supreme authority, he had no
instinctive sympathy with the inspiration of either the Old or the
New Testament ; in Hafiz or Plutarch, in Plato or Shakspere, he
found more congenial stuff. To reject tradition and think as one
might have thought if no man had ever existed before was indeed

192 AMERICAN PROSE

the aspiration of the Transcendentalists, and although Emerson
hardly regarded himself as a member of that school, he largely
shared its tendency and passed for its spokesman. Both by tem-
perament and conviction he was ready to open his mind to all
philosophic influences, from whatever quarter they might blow ;
the lessons of science and the divinations of poetry could work
themselves out in him into a free and personal religion.

The most important part of Emerson's Puritan heritage was the
habit of worship which was innate in him, the ingrained tendency
to revere the Power that works in the world, whatever might
appear to be the character of its operation. This pious attitude
was originally justified by the belief in a personal God and in a
providential government of human affairs, but survives as a reli-
gious instinct after those positive beliefs had faded away into a
recognition of " spiritual laws." The spirit of conformity, the
unction, and the loyalty even unto death inspired by the religion
of Jehovah, were dispositions acquired by too long a discipline,
and rooted in too many forms of speech, of thought, and of wor-
ship for a man like Emerson, who had felt their full force, ever to
be able to lose them. The evolutions of his abstract opinions left
that habit undisturbed. Unless we keep this circumstance in
mind, we shall not understand the kind of elation and sacred joy,
so characteristic of his eloquence, with which he propounds laws
of nature, and aspects of experience which, viewed in themselves,
often afford but an equivocal support to moral enthusiasm. An
optimism so persistent and unclouded as his will seem at variance
with the description he himself gives of human life, a description
colored by a poetic idealism, but hardly by an optimistic bias.
We must remember, therefore, that Calvinism had known how to
combine an awestruck devotion to the supreme being with no
very roseate picture of the destinies of mankind, and for more
than two hundred years had been breeding in the stock from
which Emerson came a willingness to be " damned for the glory of
God." What wonder, then, that when for the former inexorable
dispensation of Providence, Emerson substituted his general spirit-
ual and natural laws he should not have felt the spirit of worship
fail within him ? On the contrary, his thought moved in the pres-
ence of moral harmonies which seemed to him truer, more beauti-

RALPH WALDO EMERSON 1 93

ful, and more beneficent than those of the old theology; and
although an independent philosopher might not have seen in
those harmonies an object of worship or a sufficient basis for opti-
mism, he who was not primarily a philosopher but a Puritan
mystic with a poetic fancy and a gift for observation and epigram,
saw in them only a more intelligible form of the divinity he had
always recognized and adored. His was not a philosophy passing
into religion, but a religion expressing itself as a philosophy, and
veiled as it descended the heavens in various tints of poetry and
reason.

While Emerson thus preferred to withdraw, without rancor and
without contempt, from the ancient fellowship of the church, he
assumed an attitude hardly less cool and deprecatory towards the
enthusiasms of the new era. The national idea of democracy and
freedom had his complete sympathy ; he allowed himself to be
.drawn into the movement against slavery ; he took a curious and
smiling interest in the discoveries of natural science, and in the
material progress of the age. But he could go no farther. His
contemplative nature, his religious training, his dispersed reading,
made him stand aside from the life of the world, even while he
studied it with benevolent attention. His heart was fixed on eternal
things, and he was in no sense a prophet for his age and country.
He belongs by nature to that mystical company of devout souls
that recognize no particular home, and are dispersed throughout
history, although not without intercommunication. He felt his
affinity with the Hindoos and the Persians, with the Platonists and
the Stoics. Like them he remains " a friend and aider of those
who would live in the spirit." If not a star of the first magni-
tude, he is certainly a fixed star in the firmament of philosophy.
Alone as yet among Americans, he may be said to have won a
place there, if not by the originality of his thought, at least by the
originality and beauty of the expression he gave to thoughts that
are old and imperishable.

George Santayana
o

194 AMERICAN PROSE

THE SCHOLAR

I HAVE now spoken of the education of the scholar by nature,
by books, and by action. It remains to say somewhat of his duties.

They are such as become Man Thinking. They may all be com-
prised in self-trust. The office of the scholar is to cheer, to raise,
and to guide men by showing them facts amidst appearances.
He plies the slow, unhonored, and unpaid task of observation.
Flamsteed and Herschel, in their glazed observatories, may cata-
logue the stars with the praise of all men, and, the results being
splendid and useful, honor is sure. But he, in his private observa-
tory, cataloguing obscure and nebulous stars of the human mind,
which as yet no man has thought of as such, — watching days and
months, sometimes, for a few facts ; correcting still his old records ;
— must reUnquish display and immediate fame. In the long period
of his preparation he must betray often an ignorance and shiftless-
ness in popular arts, incurring the disdain of the able who shoul-
der him aside. Long he must stammer in his speech ; often forego
the living for the dead. Worse yet, he must accept, — how often !
poverty and solitude. For the ease and pleasure of treading the
old road, accepting the fashions, the education, the religion of
society, he takes the cross of making his own, and, of course, the
self-accusation, the faint heart, the frequent uncertainty and loss
of time, which are the nettles and tangling vines in the way of
the self-relying and self-directed ; and the state of virtual hostility
in which he seems to stand to society, and especially to educated
society. For all this loss and scorn, what offset? He is to find
consolation in exercising the highest functions of human nature.
He is one, who raises himself from private considerations and
breathes and lives on public and illustrious thoughts. He is the
world's eye. He is the world's heart. He is to resist the vulgar
prosperity that retrogrades ever to barbarism, by preserving and
communicating heroic sentiments, noble biographies, melodious
verse, and the conclusions of history. Whatsoever oracles the
human heart in all emergencies, in all solemn hours, has uttered
as its commentary on the world of actions, — these he shall receive
and impart. And whatsoever new verdict Reason from her inviola-

RALPH WALDO EMERSON 1 95

ble seat pronounces on the passing men and events of to-day, —
this he shall hear and promulgate.

These being his functions, it becomes him to feel all confidence
in himself, and to defer never to the popular cry. He and he only
knows the world. The world of any moment is the merest appear-
ance. Some great decorum, some fetish of a government, some
ephemeral trade, or war, or man, is cried up by half mankind and
cried down by the other half, as if all depended on this particular
up or down. The odds are that the whole question is not worth
the poorest thought which the scholar has lost in listening to the
controversy. Let him not quit his belief that a popgun is a pop-
gun, though the ancient and honorable of the earth affirm it to be
the crack of doom. In silence, in steadiness, in severe abstrac-
tion, let him hold by himself; add observation to observation,
patient of neglect, patient of reproach, and bide his own time,
— happy enough, if he can satisfy himself alone, that this day he
has seen something truly. Success treads on every right step.
For the instinct is sure, that prompts him to tell his brother what
he thinks. He then learns, that in going down into the secrets of
his own mind he has descended into the secrets of all minds. He
learns that he who has mastered any law in his private thoughts, is
master to that extent of all men whose language he speaks, and of
all into whose language his own can be translated. The poet, in
utter solitude remembering his spontaneous thoughts and record-
ing them, is found to have recorded that which men in " cities
vast*' find true for them also. The orator distrusts at first the fit-
ness of his frank confessions, — his want of knowledge of the persons
he addresses, — until he finds that he is the complement of his hear-
ers ; — that they drink his words because he fulfils for them their
own nature ; the deeper he dives into his privatest, secretest pre-
sentiment, to his wonder he finds, this is the most acceptable,
most public, and universally true. The people delight in it ; the
better part of every man feels, This is my music ; this is myself.

In self-trust all the virtues are comprehended. Free should the
scholar be, — free and brave. Free even to the definition of
freedom, " without any hindrance that does not arise out of his
own constitution.*' Brave ; for fear is a thing which a scholar by
his very function puts behind him. Fear always springs from

196 AMERICAN PROSE

ignorance. It is a shame to him if his tranquillity, amid danger-
ous times, arise from the presumption that, like children and
women, his is a protected class ; or if he seek a temporary peace
by the diversion of his thoughts from poHtics or vexed questions,
hiding his head like an ostrich in the flowering bushes, peeping
into microscopes, and turning rhymes, as a boy whistles to keep
his courage up. So is the danger a danger still ; so is the fear
worse. Manlike let him turn and face it. Let him look into its
eye and search its nature, inspect its origin, — see the whelping of
this lion, — which lies no great way back; he will then find in
himself a perfect comprehension of its nature and extent ; he will
have made his hands meet on the other side, and can henceforth
defy it, and pass on superior. The world is his, who can see
through its pretension. What deafness, what stone-bhnd custom,
what overgrown error you behold, is there only by sufferance, —
by your sufferance. See it to be a lie, and you have already dealt
it its mortal blow.

Yes, we are the cowed, — we the trustless. It is a mischievous
notion that we are come late into nature; that the world was
finished a long time ago. As the world was plastic and fluid in
the hands of God, so it is ever to so much of his attributes as we
bring to it. To ignorance and sin, it is flint. They adapt them-
selves to it as they may; but in proportion as a man has any-
thing in him divine, the firmament flows before him and takes his
signet and form. Not he is great who can alter matter, but he
who can alter my state of mind. They are the kings of the world
who give the color of their present thought to all nature and all
art, and persuade men by the cheerful serenity of their canying
the matter, that this thing which they do is the apple which the
ages have desired to pluck, now at last ripe, and inviting nations
to the harvest. The great man makes the great thing. Wherever
Macdonald sits, there is the head of the table. Linnaeus makes
botany the most alluring of studies and wins it from the farmer
and the herb- woman ; Davy, chemistry; and Cuvier, fossils. The
day is always his, who works in it with serenity and great
aims. The unstable estimates of men crowd to him whose mind
is filled with a truth, as the heaped waves of the Atlantic follow
the moon.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON ^ 197

For this self-trust, the reason is deeper than can. be &thomed,
— darker than can be enlightened. I might not carry with me
the feeling of my audience in stating my own belief. But I have
already shown the ground of my hope, in adverting to the doc-
trine that man is one. I believe that man has been wronged ; he
has wronged himself. He has almost lost the light, that can lead
him back to his prerogatives. Men are become of no account.
Men in history, men in the world of to-day are bugs, are spawn,
and are called " the mass '' and " the herd." In a century, in a
millennium, one or two men ; that is to say, — one or two approx-
imations to the right state of every man. All the rest behold in
the hero or the poet their own green and crude being, — ripened ;
yes, and are content to be less, so that may attain to its full
stature. What a testimony, — full of grandeur, full of pity, — is
borne to the demands of his own nature, by the poor clansman, the
poor partisan, who rejoices in the glory of his chief. The poor
and the low find some amends to their immense moral capacity,
for their acquiescence in a political and social inferiority. They
are content to be brushed like flies from the path of a great per-
son, so that justice shall be done by him to that common nature
which it is the dearest desire of all to see enlarged and glorified.
They sun themselves in the great man*s light, and feel it to be
their own element. They cast the dignity of man from their
downtrod selves upon the shoulders of a hero, and will perish to
add one drop of blood to make that great heart beat, those giant
sinews combat and conquer. He lives for us, and we live in him.

Men such as they are, very naturally seek money or power ;
and power because it is as good as money, — the ** spoils,** so
called, "of office.** And why not? for they aspire to the highest,
and this, in their sleep-walking, they dream is highest. Wake
them and they shall quit the false good and leap to the true, and
leave governments to clerks and desks. This revolution is to be
wrought by the gradual domestication of the idea of Culture.
The main enterprise of the world for splendor, for extent, is the
upbuilding of a man. Here are the materials strown along the
ground. The private life of one man shall be a more illustrious
monarchy, — more formidable to its enemy, more sweet and
serene in its influence to its friend, than any kingdom in history.

198 * AMERICAN PROSE

For a man, rightly viewed, comprehendeth the particular natures
of all men. Each philosopher, each bard, each actor, has only
done for me, as by a delegate, what one day I can do for myself.
The books which once, we valued more than the apple of the eye,
we have quite exhausted. What is that but sajdng, that we have
come up with the point of view which the universal mind took
through the eye of one scribe ; we have been that man, and have
passed on. First, one ; then, another ; we drain all cisterns, and,
waxing greater by all these supplies, we crave a better and more
abundant food. The man has never lived that can feed us ever.
The human mind cannot be enshrined in a person, who shall set
a barrier on any one side to this unbounded, unboundable empire.
It is one central fire, which, flaming now out of the lips of Etna,
lightens the capes of Sicily ; and, now out of the throat of Vesu-
vius, illuminates the towers and vineyards of Naples. It is one
light which beams out of a thousand stars. It is one soul which
animates all men.

[From An Oration delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society^ at Cam*
bridge [il/tfw.], Aug. 31^ ^837, Afterwards known as "The Americao
Scholar." From the text of the second edition, 1838.]

SELF-RELIANCE

It is for want of self-culture that the idol of Travelling, the
idol of Italy, of England, of Egypt, remains for all educated
Americans. They who made England, Italy, or Greece venera-
ble in the imagination, did so not by rambling round creation as
a moth round a lamp, but by sticking fast where they were, like
an axis of the earth. In manly hours, we feel that duty is our
place, and that the merrymen of circumstance should follow as
they may. The soul is no traveller : the wise man stays at home
with the soul, and when his necessities, his duties, on any occasion
call him from his house, or into foreign lands, he is at home still,
and is not gadding abroad from himself, and shall make men sen-
sible by the expression of his countenance, that he goes the mis-
sionary of wisdom and virtue, and visits cities and men like a
sovereign, and not like an interloper or a valet.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON 1 99

I have no churlish objection to the circumnavigation of the
globe, for the purposes of art, of study, and benevolence, so that
the man is first domesticated, or does not go abroad with the
hope of finding somewhat greater than he knows. He who travels
to be amused, or to get somewhat which he does not carry,
travels away from himself, and grows old even in youth among
old things. In Thebes, in Palmyra, his will and mind have be-
come old and dilapidated as they. He carries ruins to ruins.

Travelling is a fool's paradise. We owe to our first journeys
the discovery that place is nothing. At home I dream that at
Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my
sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the
sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the
stem Fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from.
I seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated
with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant
goes with me wherever I go.

But the rage of travelling is itself only a symptom of a deeper
unsoundness affecting the whole intellectual action. The intellect
is vagabond, and the universal system of education fosters rest-
lessness. Our minds travel when our bodies are forced to stay
at home. We imitate ; and what is imitation but the travelling
of the mind ? Our houses are built with foreign taste ; our
shelves are garnished with foreign ornaments ; our opinions,
our tastes, our whole minds lean, and follow the Past and the
Distant, as the eyes of a maid follow her mistress. The soul
created the arts wherever they have flourished. It was in his own
mind that the artist sought his model. It was an application of
his own thought to the thing to be done and the conditions to be
observed. And why need we copy the Doric or the Gothic
model? Beauty, convenience, grandeur of thought, and quaint
expression are as near to us as to any, and if the American artist
will study with hope and love the precise thing to be done by
him, considering the climate, the soil, the length of the day, the
wants of the people, the habit and form of the government, he
will create a house in which all these will find themselves fitted,
and taste and sentiment will be satisfied also.

Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can pre-

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sent every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's
cultivation ; but of the adopted talent of another, you have only
an extemporaneous, half possession. That which each can do
best, none but his Maker can teach him. No man yet knows
what it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited it. Where is
the master who could have taught Shakespeare? Where is the
master who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington, or
Bacon, or Newton? Every great man is an unique. The Scipion-
ism of Scipio is precisely that part he could not borrow. If any
body will tell me whom the great man imitates in the original
crisis when he performs a great act, I will tell him who else than
himself can teach him. Shakespeare will never be made by the
study of Shakespeare. Do that which is assigned thee, and thou
canst not hope too much or dare too much. There is at this
moment, there is for me an utterance bare and grand as that of
the colossal chisel of Phidias, or trowel of the Egyptians, or the
pen of Moses, or Dante, but different from all these. Not pos-
sibly will the soul all rich, all eloquent, with thousand- cloven
tongue, deign to repeat itself; but if I can hear what these patri-
archs say, surely I can reply to them in the same pitch of voice :
for the ear and the tongue are two organs of one nature. Dwell
up there in the simple and noble regions of thy life, obey thy
heart, and thou shalt reproduce the Foreworld again.

As our Religion, our Education, our Art look abroad, so does
our spirit of society. All men plume themselves on the improve-
ment of society, and no man improves.

Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it
gains on the other. Its progress is only apparent, like the
workers of a treadmill. It undergoes continual changes : it is
barbarous, it is civilized, it is Christianized, it is rich, it is
scientific ; but this change is not amelioration. For everything
that is given, something is taken. Society acquires new arts and
loses old instincts. What a contrast between the well-clad, read-
ing, writing, thinking American, with a watch, a pencil, and a
bill of exchange in his pocket, and the naked New Zealander,
whose property is a club, a spear, a mat, and an undivided
twentieth of a shed to sleep under. But compare the health
of the two men, and you shall see that his aboriginal strength

RALPH WALDO EMERSON 201

the white man has lost. If the traveller tell us truly, strike the
savage with a broadaxe, and in a day or two the flesh shall unite
and heal as if you struck the blow into soft pitch, and the same
blow shall send the white to his gra\'e.

The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his
feet. He is supported on crutches, but loses so much support of
muscle. He has got a fine Geneva watch, but he has lost the
skill to tell the hour by the sun. A Greenwich nautical almanac
he has, and so being sure of the information when he wants it, the
man in the street does not know a star in the sky. The solstice
he does not observe ; the equinox he knows as little ; and the
whole bright calendar of the year is without a dial in his mind.
His note-books impair his memory ; his libraries overload his
wit ; the insurance-office increases the number of accidents ; and
it may be a question whether machinery does not encumber;
whether we have not lost by refinement some energy, by a Chris-
tianity entrenched in establishments and forms, some vigor of
wild virtue. For every stoic was a stoic; but in Christendom
where is the Christian?

There is no more deviation in the moral standard than in the
standard of height or bulk. No greater men are now than ever
were. A singular equality may be observed between the great
men of the first and of the last ages ; nor can all the science, art,
religion and philosophy of the nineteenth century avail to educate
greater men than Plutarch's heroes, three or four and twenty cen-
turies ago. Not in time is the race progressive. Phocion, Soc-
rates, Anaxagoras, Diogenes, are great men, but they leave no
class. He who is really of their class will not be called by their
name, but be wholly his own man, and in his turn the founder of
a sect. The arts and inventions of each period are only its cos-
tume, and do not invigorate men. The harm of the improved
machinery may compensate its good. Hudson and Behring
accomplished so much in their fishing-boats, as to astonish Parry
and Franklin, whose equipment exhausted the resources of science
and art. Galileo, with an opera-glass, discovered a more splendid
series of facts than any one since. Columbus found the New
World in an undecked boat. It is curious to see the periodical
disuse and perishing of means and machinery which were intro*

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duced with loud laudation, a few years or centuries before. The
great genius returns to essential man. We reckoned the improve-
ments of the art of war among the triumphs of science, and yet
Napoleon conquered Europe by the Bivouac, which consisted of
falling back on naked valor, and disencumbering it of all aids.
The Emperor held it impossible to make a perfect army, says
Las Casas, " without abolishing our arms, magazines, commissaries,
and carriages, until in imitation of the Roman custom, the soldier
should receive his supply of corn, grind it in his hand-mill, and
bake his bread himself."

Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the water of
which it is composed, does not. The same particle does not rise
from the valley to the ridge. Its unity is only phenomenal. The
persons who make up a nation to-day, next year die, and their
experience with them.

And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance on
governments which protect it, is the want of self-reliance. Men
have looked away from themselves and at things so long, that they
have come to esteem what they call the souPs progress, namely,
the religious, learned, and civil institutions, as guards of property,
and they deprecate assaults on these, because they feel them to be
assaults on property. They measure their esteem of each other,
by what each has, and not by what each is. But a cultivated man
becomes ashamed of his property, ashamed of what he has, out of
new respect for his being. Especially he hates what he has, if he
see that it is accidental, — came to him by inheritance, or gift, or
crime ; then he feels that it is not having ; it does not belong to him,
has no root in him, and merely lies there, because no revolution or
no robber takes it away. But that which a man is, does always by
necessity acquire, and what the man acquires is permanent and
living property, which does not wait the beck of rulers, or mobs,
or revolutions, or fire, or storm, or bankruptcies, but perpetually
renews itself wherever the man is put. " Thy lot or portion of
life,'* said the Caliph AH, " is seeking after thee ; therefore be at
rest from seeking after it." Our dependence on these foreign
goods leads us to our slavish respect for numbers. The political
parties meet in numerous conventions ; the greater the concourse,
and with each new uproar of announcement, The delegation from

RALPH WALDO EMERSON 203

Essex ! The Democrats from New Hampshire ! The Whigs of
Maine ! the young patriot feels himself stronger than before by a
new thousand of eyes and arms. In like manner the reformers
summon conventions, and vote and resolve in multitude. But not
so, O friends ! will the God design to enter and inhabit you, but
by a method precisely the reverse. It is only as a man puts off
from himself all external support, and stands alone, that I see him
to be strong and to prevail. He is weaker by every recruit to his
banner. Is not a man better than a town ? Ask nothing of men,
and in the endless mutation, thou only firm column must presently
appear the upholder of all that surrounds thee. He who knows
that power is in the soul, that he is weak only because he has
looked for good out of him and elsewhere, and so perceiving,
throws himself unhesitatingly on his thought, instantly rights him-
self, stands in the erect position, commands his limbs, works mir-
acles ; just as a man who stands on his feet is stronger than a man
who stands on his head.

So use all that is called Fortune. Most men gamble with her,
and gain all, and lose all, as her wheel rolls. But do thou leave
as unlawful these winnings, and deal with Cause and Effect, the
chancellors of God. In the Will work and acquire, and thou hast
chained the wheel of Chance, and shalt always drag her after
thee. A political victory, a rise of rents, the recovery of your
sick, or the return of your absent friend, or some other quite
external event, raises your spirits, and you think good days are
preparing for you. Do not believe it. It can never be so.
Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring
you peace but the triumph of principles.

[From EssaySi First Series, 1841, " Self-Reliance." The text is that of the
Hrst edition.]

EXPERIENCE

Life will be imaged, but cannot be divided nor doubled. Any
invasion of its unity would be chaos. The soul is not twin-born,
but the only begotten, and though revealing itself as child in time,
child in appearance, is of a fatal and universal power, admitting
no co-life. Every day, every act, betrays the ill-concealed deity.

204 AMERICAN PROSE

We believe in ourselves as we do not believe in others. We per-
mit all things to ourselves, and that which we call sin in others, is
experiment for us. It is an instance of our faith in ourselves, that
men never speak of crime as lightly as they think : or, every man
thinks a latitude safe for himself, which is nowise to be indulged
to another. The act looks very differently on the inside, and on
the outside ; in its quality, and in its consequences. Murder in
the murderer is no such ruinous thought as poets and romancers
will have it ; it does not unsettle him, or fright him from his
ordinary notice of trifles ; it is an act quite easy to be contem-
plated, but in its sequel, it turns out to be a horrible jangle and
confounding of all relations. Especially the crimes that spring
from love, seem right and fair from. the actor's point of view, but,
when acted, are found destructive of society. No man at last
believes that he can be lost, nor that the crime in him is as black
as in the felon. Because the intellect qualifies in our own case
the moral judgments. For there is no crime to the intellect.
That is antinomian or hypernomian, and judges law as well as
fact. " It is worse than a crime, it is a blunder," said Napoleon,
speaking the language of the intellect. To it, the world is a prob-
lem in mathematics or the science of quantity, and it leaves out
praise and blame, and all weak emotions. All stealing is com-
parative. If you come to absolutes, pray who does not steal?
Saints are sad, because they behold sin; (even when they specu-
late,) from the point of view of the conscience, and not of the
intellect ; a confusion of thought. Sin seen from the thought is a
diminution or less : seen from the conscience or will, it is pravity
or bad. The intellect names it shade, absence of light, and no
essence. The conscience must feel it as essence, essential evil.
That it is not : it has an objective existence, but no subjective.

Thus inevitably does the universe wear our color, and every ob-
ject fall successively into the subject itself. The subject exists,
the subject enlarges ; all things sooner or later fall into place. As
I am, so I see ; use what language we will, we can never see any-
thing but what we are ; Hermes, Cadmus, Columbus, Newton,
Buonaparte, are the mind's ministers. Instead of feeling a pov-
erty when we encounter a great man, let us treat the newcomer
like a travelling geologist, who passes through our estate, and

RALPH WALDO EMERSON 205

shows us good slate, or limestone, or anthracite, in our brush pas-
ture. The partial action of each strong raind in one direction, is a
telescope for the objects on which it is pointed. But every other
part of knowledge is to be pushed to the same extravagance, ere
the soul attains her due sphericity. Do you see that kitten chas-
ing so prettily her own tail ? If you could look with her eyes, you
might see her surrounded with hundreds of figures performing
complex dramas, with tragic and comic issues, long conversations,
many characters, many ups and downs of fate, — and meantime it
is only puss and her tail. How long before our masquerade will
end its noise of tamborines, laughter, and shouting, and we shall
find it was a solitary performance? — A subject and an object,
— it takes so much to make the galvanic circuit complete, but
magnitude adds nothing. What imports it whether it is Kepler
and the sphere ; Columbus and America ; a reader and his book ;
or puss with her tail ?

It is true that all the muses and love and religion hate these de-
velopments, and will find a way to punish the chemist, who pub-
lishes in the parlor the secrets of the laboratory. And we cannot
say too little of our constitutional necessity of seeing things under
private aspects, or saturated with our humors. And yet is the God
the native of these bleak rocks. That need makes in morals the
capital virtue of self-trust. We must hold hard to this poverty,
however scandalous, and by more vigorous self- recoveries, after the
sallies of action, possess our axis more firmly. The life of truth is
cold, and 50 far mournful; but it is not the slave of tears, contri-
tions, and perturbations. It does not attempt another's work, nor
adopt another's facts. It is a main lesson of wisdom to know your
own from another's. I have learned that I cannot dispose of
other people's facts ; but I possess such a key to my own, as per-
suades me against all their denials, that they also have a key to
theirs. A sympathetic person is placed in the dilemma of a
swimmer among drowning men, who all catch at him, and if he
give so much as a leg or a finger, they will drown hira. They
wish to be saved from the mischief of their vices, but not from their
vices. Charity would be wasted on this poor waiting on the symp-
toms. A wise and hardy physician will say. Come out of that, as
the first condition of advice.

206 AMERICAN PROSE

In this our talking America, we are ruined by our good-nature
and listening on all sides. This compliance takes away the power
of being gready useful. A man should not be able to look other
than directly and forthright. A preoccupied attention is the only
answer to the importunate frivolity of other people : an attention
and to an aim which makes their wants frivolous. This is a divine
answer, and leaves no appeal, and no hard thoughts. In Flax-
man's drawing of the Eumenides of ^Eschylus, Orestes supplicates
Apollo, whilst the Furies sleep on the threshold. The face of the
god expresses a shade of regret and compassion, but calm with
the conviction of the irreconcilableness of the two spheres. He is
born into other politics, into the eternal and beautiful. The man
at his feet asks for his interest in turmoils of the earth, into which
his nature cannot enter. And the Eumenides there lying express
pictorially this disparity. The god is surcharged with his divine
destiny.

Illusion, Temperament, Succession, Surface, Surprise, Reality,
Subjectiveness, — these are threads on the loom of time, these are
the lords of life. I dare not assume to give their order, but I
name them as I find them in my way. I know better than to claim
any completeness for my picture. I am a fragment, and this is a
fragment of me. I can very confidently announce one or another
law, which throws itself into relief and form, but I am too young
yet by some ages to compile a code. I gossip for my hour con-
cerning the eternal politics. I have seen many fair pictures not in
vain. A wonderful time I have lived in. I am not the novice I
was fourteen, nor yet seven years ago. Let who will ask, where is
the fruit? I find a private fruit sufficient. This is a fruit, — that
I should not ask for a rash effect from meditations, counsels, and
the hiving of truths. I should feel it pitiful to demand a result on
this town and county, an overt effect on the instant month and
year. The effect is deep and secular as the cause. It works on
periods in which mortal lifetime is lost. All I know is reception;
I am and I have : but I do not get, and when I have fancied I had
gotten anything, I found I had not. I worship with wonder the
great Fortune. My reception has been so large, that I am not
annoyed by receiving this or that superabundantly. I say to the
Genius, if he will pardon the proverb, Inforamill^ in for a million.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON 207

When I receive a new gift, I do not macerate my body to make
the account square, for, if I should die, I could not make the
account square. The benefit overran the merit the first day,
and has overrun the merit ever since. The merit itself, so called,
I reckon part of the receiving.

Also, that hankering after an overt or practical effect seems to
me an apostasy. In good earnest, I am willing to spare this most
unnecessary deal of doing. Life wears to me a visionary face.
Hardest, roughest action is visionary also. It is but a choice be-
tween soft and turbulent dreams. People disparage knowing and the
intellectual life, and urge doing. I am very content with knowing,
if only I could know. That is an august entertainment, and would
suffice me a great while. To know a little, would be worth the
expense of this world. I hear always the law of Adrastia, " that
every soul which had acquired any truth, should be safe fi'om harm
until another period."

I know that the world I converse with in the city and in the
farms is not the world I think, I observe that difference, and
shall observe it. One day, I shall know the value and law of this
discrepance. But I have not found that much was gained by
manipular attempts to realize the world of thought. Many eager
persons successfully make an experiment in this way, and make
themselves ridiculous. They acquire democratic manners, they
foam at the mouth, they hate and deny. Worse, I observe, that
in the history of mankind, there is never a solitary example of
success, — taking their own tests of success. I say this polemically,
or in reply to the inquiry, why not realize your world ? But far
be from me the despair which prejudges the law by a paltry empiri-
cism, — since there never was a right endeavor, but it succeeded.
Patience and patience, we shall win at the last. We must be very
suspicious of the deceptions of the element of time. It takes a
good deal of time to eat or to sleep, or to earn a hundred dollars,
and a very little time to entertain a hope and an insight which
becomes the light of our life. We dress our garden, eat our
dinners, discuss the household with our wives, and these things
make no impression, are forgotten next week ; but in the solitude
to which every man is always returning, he has a sanity and reve-
lations, which in his passage into new worlds he will carry with

208 AMERICAN PROSE

him. Never mind the ridicule, never mind the defeat : up again,
old heart ! — it seems to say, — there is victory yet for all justice ;
and the true romance which the world exists to realize will be the
transformation of genius into practical power.

[From Essay Sy Second Series, 1844, " Experience." The text it that of the
first edition.]

NATURE

The rounded world is fair to see,

Nine times folded in mystery :

Though baffled seers cannot impart

The secret of its laboring heart.

Throb thine with Nature's throbbing breast,

And all is clear from east to west.

Spirit that lurks each form within

Beckons to spirit of its kin ;

Self-kindled every atom glows,

And hints the future which it owes.

There are days which occur in this climate, at almost any sea-
son of the year, wherein the world reaches its perfection, when
the air, the heavenly bodies, and the earth make a harmony, as if
Nature would indulge her offspring ; when, in these bleak upper
sides of the planet, nothing is to desire that we have heard of the
happiest latitudes, and we bask in the shining hours of Florida
and Cuba ; when everything that has life gives signs of satisfaction,
and the cattle that lie on the ground seem to have great and tran-
quil thoughts. These halcyons may be looked for with a little
more assurance in that pure October weather, which we distinguish
by the name of the Indian Summer. The day, immeasurably long,
sleeps over the broad hills and warm wide fields. To have lived
through all its sunny hours seems longevity enough. The solitary
places do not seem quite lonely. At the gates of the forest, the
surprised man of the world is forced to leave his city estimates of
great and small, wise and foolish. The knapsack of custom falls
off his back with the first step he makes into these precincts.
Here is sanctity which shames our religions, and reality which
discredits our heroes. Here we find nature to be the circum-

RALPH WALDO EMERSON 209

stance which dwarfs every other circumstance, and judges like a
god all men that come to her. We have crept out of our close
and crowded houses into the night and morning, and we see what
majestic beauties daily wrap us in their bosom. How willingly
we would escape the barriers which render them comparatively
impotent, escape the sophistication and second thought, and suffer
nature to entrance us. The tempered light of the woods is like a
perpetual morning, and is stimulating and heroic. The anciently
reported spells of these places creep on us. The stems of pines,
hemlocks, and oaks almost gleam like iron on the excited eye.
The incommunicable trees begin to persuade us to live with them,
and quit our life of solemn trifles. Here no history, or church,
or state is interpolated on the divine sky and the immortal year.
How easily we might walk onward into the opening landscape,
absorbed by new pictures, and by thoughts fast succeeding each
other, until by degrees the recollection of home was crowded out
of the mind, all memory obliterated by the tyranny of the present,
and we were led in triumph by nature.

These enchantments are medicinal, they sober and heal us.
These are plain pleasures, kindly and native to us. We come to
our own, and make friends with matter, which the ambitious chat-
ter of the schools would persuade us to despise. We never can
part with it ; the mind loves its old home : as water to our thirst,
so is the rock, the ground, to our eyes, and hands, and feet. It
is firm water : it is cold flame : what health, what affinity ! Ever
an old friend, ever like a dear friend and brother, when we chat
affectedly with strangers, comes in this honest face, and takes a
grave liberty with us, and shames us out of our nonsense. Cities
give not the human senses room enough. We go out daily and
nightly to feed flie eyes on the horizon, and require so much scope,
just as we need water for our bath. There are all degrees of nat-
ural influence, from these quarantine powers of nature, up to her
dearest and gravest ministrations to the imagination and the soul.
There is the bucket of cold water from the spring, the wood-fire
to which the chilled traveller rushes for safety, — and there is the
sublime moral of autumn and of noon. We nestle in nature, and
draw our living as parasites from her roots and grains, and we
receive glances from the heavenly bodies, which call us to solitude^
p

2IQ AMERICAN PROSE

and foretell the remotest future. The blue zenith is the point in
which romance and reality meet. I think, if we should be rapt
away into all that we dream of heaven, and should converse with
Gabriel and Uriel, the upper sky would be all that would remain
of our furniture.

It seems as if the day was not wholly profane, in which we have
given heed to some natural object. The fall of snowflakes in a
still air, preserving to each crystal its perfect form ; the blowing
of sleet over a wide sheet of water, and over plains ; the waving
rye-field ; the mimic waving of acres of houstonia, whose innu-
merable florets whiten and ripple before the eye ; the reflections
of trees and flowers in glassy lakes ; the musical steaming odorous
south wind, which converts all trees to windharps ; the crackling
and spurting of hemlock in the flames ; or of pine logs, which
yield glory to the walls and faces in the sittingroom, — these are
the music and pictures of the most ancient religion. My house
stands in low land, with limited outlook, and on the skirt of the
village. But I go with my friend to the shore of our little river,
and with one stroke of the paddle, I leave the village politics and
personalities, yes, and the world of villages and personalities
behind, and pass into a delicate realm of sunset and moonlight,
too bright almost for spotted man to enter without noviciate and
probation. We penetrate bodily this incredible beauty : we dip
our hands in this painted element : our eyes are bathed in these
lights and forms. A holiday, a villeggiatura, a royal revel, the
proudest, most heart-rejoicing festival that valor and beauty,
power and taste, ever decked and enjoyed, establishes itself on
the instant. These sunset clouds, these delicately emerging stars,
with their private and ineffable glances, signify it and proffer it.
I am taught the poorness of our invention, the ugliness of towns
and palaces. Art and luxury have early learned that they must
work as enhancement and sequel to this original beauty. I am
overinstructed for my return. Henceforth I shall be hard to
please. I cannot go back to toys. I am grown expensive and
sophisticated. I can no longer live without elegance ; but a
countryman shall be my master of revels. He who knows the
most, he who knows what sweets and virtues are in the ground,
the waters, the plants, the heavens, and how to come at these en-

RALPH WALDO EMERSON 211

chantments, is the rich and royal man. Only as far as the masters
of the worid have called in nature to their aid, can they reach the
height of magnificence. This is the meaning of their hanging-
gardens, villas, garden-houses, islands, parks, and preserves, to
back their faulty personality with these strong accessories. I do
not wonder that the landed interest should be invincible in the
state with these dangerous auxiliaries. These bribe and invite;
not kings, not palaces, not men, not women, but these tender and
poetic stars, eloquent of secret promises. We heard what the
rich man said, we knew of his villa, his grove, his wine, and his
company, but the provocation and point of the invitation came
out of these beguiling stars. In their soft glances-, I see what men
strove to realize in some Versailles, or Paphos, or Ctesiphon.
Indeed, it is the magical lights of the horizon, and the blue sky
for the background, which save all our works of art, which were
otherwise bawbles. When the rich tax the poor with servility
and obsequiousness, they should consider the effect of men re-
puted to be the possessors of nature, on imaginative minds. Ah !
if the rich were rich as the poor fancy riches ! A boy hears a
military band play on the field at night, and he has kings and
queens, and famous chivalry palpably before him. He hears the
echoes of a horn in a hill country, in the Notch Mountains, for
example, which converts the mountains into an -^olian harp, and
this supernatural tiralira restores to him the Dorian mythology,
Apollo, Diana, and all divine hunters and huntresses. Can a
musical note be so lofty, so haughtily beautifiil ! To the poor
young poet, thus fabulous is his picture of society ; he is loyal ;
he respects the rich ; they are rich for the sake of his imagination ;
how poor his fancy would be, if they were not rich ! That they
have some high-fenced grove, which they call a park ! that they
live in larger and better-garnished saloons than he has visited,
and go in coaches, keeping only the society of the elegant, to
watering-places, and to distant cities, are the groundwork from
which he has delineated estates of romance, compared with which
their actual possessions are shanties and paddocks. The muse
herself betrays her son, and enhances the gifts of wealth and well-
born beauty, by a radiation out of the air, and clouds, and forests
that skirt the road, — a certain haughty favor, as if from patrician

212 AMERICAN PROSE

genii to patricians, a kind of aristocracy in nature, a prince of the
power of the air.

The moral sensibility which makes Edens and Tempes so easily,
may not be always found, but the material landscape is never far
off. We can find these enchantments without visiting the Como
Lake, or the Madeira Islands. We exaggerate the praises of local
scenery. In every landscape, the point of astonishment is the
meeting of the sky and the earth, and that is seen from the first
hillock as well as from the top of the Alleghanies. The stars at
night stoop down over the brownest, homeliest common, with all
the spiritual magnificence which they shed on the Campagna, or
on the marble deserts of Egypt. The uproUed clouds and the
colors of morning and evening, will transfigure maples and alders.
The difference between landscape and landscape is small, but
there is great difference in the beholders. There is nothing so
wonderful in any particular landscape, as the necessity of being
beautiful under which every landscape lies. Nature cannot be
surprised in undress. Beauty breaks in everywhere.

[From Essays, Second Series, " Nature," 1844. The text is that of the first
edition.]

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

[Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem, Mass., July 4, 1804, and died in
Plymouth, N.H., May 19, 1864. Hawthorne came of an old Puritan family,
long resident in Salem. His great-great-grandfather was a judge in the witch-
craft trials, and his grandfather a Revolutionary officer. His father was a
sea-captain. In 1821, Hawthorne graduated at Bowdoin College, where Long-
fellow was his classmate. From 1821 to 1839 he remained in Salem, devoting
himself to reading and composition, and living for the most part in great
seclusion. In 1836-8 he was engaged in editorial work; in 1839-41 he was
weigher and gauger at the Boston custom house, under George Bancroft, who
was then collector of the port; in 1841-2 he spent a year at Brook Farm»
He married in 1842, and lived at Concord, Mass., until 1846. From 1846 to
1849 he was surveyor at the Salem custom house, and from 1850 to 1853 lived
successively in Lenox, West Newton, and Concord, Mass. In 1853 he was
appointed consul at Liverpool, by his old college friend. President Peirce.
He held office for four years, and passed three years more in foreign travel;
the remainder of his life he spent at Concord.

Some of Hawthorne's best stories appeared in various periodicals be-
tween 1828 and 1838. His first published work was Twice-Told Tales, first
volume, 1837; second volume, 1842. The names and dates of his other im-
portant works are as follows: Mosses from an Old Manse (1846), The
Scarlet Letter (1850), The House of the Seven Gables (1851), A Wonder
Book {i%t^\),The Blithedale Romance ( 1 85 2) , Tanglewood Tales ( 1 853) , The
Marble Faun (i860). Our Old Home (1863). The following were published
after his death : Passages from the American Note Books {1S6S), Passages /rom
the English Note Books (1870), Passages from the French and Italian Noti
Books (1871), Septipiius Felton (1872), The Dolliver Romance (1876), Doctof
Grimshawe^s Secret (1883).

Perhaps it is not extravagant to describe Hawthorne as the
greatest American man of letters of his day and generation. He
may have been surpassed by some of his contemporaries in single
pieces of literature ; he may have been inferior to some of them
in intellectual power and in versatility and originality of genius ;
he may even, though this is more doubtful, have been rivalled by
some of them in his mastery of style. Nevertheless, he is the
greatest distinctively American Hterary artist of his day, — the one

313

214 AMERICAN PROSE

writer in America who loved life and looked out upon life with an
unflagging desire to create beauty in literature and with the ability
to make that desire effective. Emerson, besides being a writer,
was a preacher, a lecturer, a philosopher. Lowell was a teacher
and a diplomat. Thoreau was too much of a seer to be a typical
man of letters, — too self-involved, too careless of a public. Poe
was thoroughly a man of letters, but hardly an American one ; his
work seems exotic.

Hawthorne's work, on the other hand, bears everywhere im-
pressed on it traces of its American origin, of its New England
origin. Richard Holt Hutton has called Hawthorne " the Ghost
of New England." The aptness of the name lies in its suggestion
both of Hawthorne's loyalty to New England life and of his pathetic
remoteness from that life ; his practical ineffectualness in the
midst of it. Hawthorne haunts New England. He is not at
home there, nor indeed anywhere on this earth-ball, and yet he
cannot escape. Concentrated in his nature, he has all the old
Puritan prejudices, and throughout his artistic dreaming, he not
only makes use of New England material, but he uses this material
in harmony with Puritan feelings and beliefs. Each of his romances
turns out, on analysis, to be the artistic expression and illustration
of some deeply rooted moral or spiritual prejudice that has been
inherited from Puritan ancestors and that has completely subdued
to its purposes, for the time being, Hawthorne's imagination.

Hawthorne's methods in his story- writing are substantially the
same whether the story be short or long. He works from the con-
ception of some symbolic image or character or situation out
toward the world of concrete fact. He cares for and is concerned
to portray, not primarily fact, but the world on the other side of
fact, for the revelation of which fact must be duly refined and
made transparent. His stories owe their origin not to the desire
to catch the surface play of expression on some portion of every-
day life, but to a wish to illustrate some half-mystical truth about
human destiny, usually about man's moral or spiritual nature. In
the service of this wish, Hawthorne's imagination quests hither
and yon through the regions of visible and verifiable experience,
and fashions gradually a mimic world of men and women and
nature, all expressive of a single controlling purpose.

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 21$

Correspondent with these aims and methods is Hawthorne's
characterization. Typical characters in their large outlines shape
themselves in his imagination; these characters are not closely
realized, or wrought out into the minute complication of habit and
quality and motive that exists in the world of individualized fact
and that our modem novelists try to achieve in emulation of nature.
Hawthorne's characters have each only a few prevailing interests
and aims, which serve to guide them through a remote world of
tempered light and shade and to keep them ever intent on some
symbolic purpose. Their persuasiveness comes not from their
having the complexity of Hfe, but from their appeal to our sym-
pathy and imagination. We meet them more than half-way,
because they stir into play some of the most radical and permanent
instincts of human nature and seem sincerely concerned with the
great primal interests and facts of life.

In order that these typical characters may capture our sympathy
and belief, Hawthorne has to keep them from any rude competi-
tion with actual life. Hence come the calculated vagueness of his
treatment and his delicate search for atmosphere. His charac-
ters nearly always issue from a nebulous past ; like Priscilla they
"fall out of the clouds" : "a slight mist of uncertainty " floats
about them and keeps them " from taking a very decided place
among creatures of flesh and blood." Their motives and even
their acts are often left uncertain ; in place of clear accounts of
these matters, strange rumors are recited, that have run from lip
to lip ; the superstitious whisperings of credulous onlookers are
reported and keep the reader continually in a calculated uncer-
tainty. Acts and motives are sheltered from the impertinent
queries of the verifying scientific spirit. The characters, too, are
stamped as irretrievably out of the common by tricks of manner
or physical traits that tantalize us with symbolic suggestiveness ;
Priscilla seems " listening to a distant voice " ; Dimmesdale*s hand
clutches convulsively at his heart; Donatello has dubious ears.
These tricks and features tease the imagination and keep it alert ;
more is meant than meets the eye. The characters awe us by
their mysterious, only half-divined significance ; symbols they are
and symbols they pursue. They are " goblins of flesh and blood,"
and delicately avoid the taint of conformity to literal fact. Even

2l6 AMERICAN PROSE

in speech, they hold themselves nicely aloof from daily idionk
The workmen speak the language of books, and the children, a
simplified, but exquisitely literary English.

Hawthorne's world, too, is a symbolic world, full of echoes of
spiritual life, full of fine and unexpected correspondences with
abstract moral truth, full of conscious Deity. All things work
together for the revelation of spiritual beauty and its attending
moods. Symbols abound ; scarlet letters blaze in the heavens ;
crimson roses bloom by prison doors. The general background
of each romance has a special aptness for rendering more deli-
cately conspicuous the spiritual meaning of the action. In the
Marble Faun, which is everywhere studious of the deepest and
most permanent of human problems, — the mystery of evil, — and
which devotes itself to illustrating this problem in symbolic form,
Rome, the city that more than any other contains richly accumu-
lated memories of the human race, forms the setting for the action,
and embraces it in a range of thought and feeling that enhances
the typical and universal quality of the incidents and characters.
TTie Scarlet Letter, the Romance of Expiation, finds its appropri-
ate setting in the midst of the obdurately gray life of Puritanism
that will reveal its inner flame only when sin or superstition gives
the provocation. An intense racial demand for righteousness
heightens artistically and renders doubly appreciable the quality of
Hester's sin and tragic suffering. Even the Blithedale Romance
has its own atmosphere. The actors are " solitary sentinels, whose
station was on the outposts of the advance guard of human pro-
gression . . . whose present bivouac was considerably further into
the waste of chaos than any mortal army of crusaders had ever
marched before."

Yet, notwithstanding all this vagueness and mystery, and this
confessedly elaborate dreaming in the interests of morals and
beauty, Hawthorne's world is a very habitable world. He is the
most human of ghost-raisers, and life as he portrays it, though
haunted and prescient, has after all geniality and warmth. This
comes from the fact that his romances, in obedience to the rule he
himself has prescribed, are loyal to " the truth of the human heart."
Though he is a dreamer, his dreams remain faithful to what is best
in human nature. He is a true appreciator of the griefs and the

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 21 y

joys, the struggles and the passions that make up the drama of
actual life. He portrays with loving reverence the frailty of chil-
dren, the fragile grace of young girls ; the mischances of the van-
quished in the struggle of life ; the wretchedness of those who like
Hester and Zenobia have been ill-fated in love ; the pathetic short-
comings of unhappily tempered natures like Clifford and Miriam.
He is swift to honor both in men and women spiritual intensity and
consecration and fortitude. The more practical, every-day virtues
of prudence and justice, truth and persistent courage, he also
exalts, though these are more apt to be taken for granted and
presented casually, as in his conventional hero, Kenyon. Ardent
disregard of tradition and custom in the pursuit of lofty concep-
tions of virtue and progress, he sympathetically portrajrs in Hol-
grave, in Miles Coverdale, and in the Artist of the Beautiful.
Worldly cleverness and success, he satirizes incidentally in many
short stories and above all in the character of Judge Pyncheon.
Hawthorne is a dreamer who finds the great need of the world to
be " sleep," — rest from its " morbid activity, ... so that the
race might in due time awake as an infant out of dewy slumber
and be restored to the simple perception of what is right, and the
single-hearted desire to achieve it." Yet despite his distrust of
conventionality and custom, his dreaming habit of mind, and his
delight in the other-worldly, he is in his moral appreciations of
conduct essentially normal and loves and honors the virtues and
achievements that all good men and women beheve in and vibrate
responsively to. And the truth and habitableness of his world,
despite its modulated atmosphere and its half-goblin populace,
come from its essential loyalty to the demands and the awards of
the normal human heart.

Hawthorne's world differs here completely from the world into
which the modern decadents induct us, — from Poe*s world, too.
Ghastliness, mystery, horror, are never with Hawthorne's ends in
themselves ; they never usurp, but are made to minister to the
normal interests of well-balanced life. Moreover, the artificiality
of Hawthorne's characters and the directed sequences of the action
seem in a way more justified than the capricious arabesques of
weird incident and morbid motive that decadents delight to invent,
for Hawthorne never plays fast and loose with essential truth or

2l8 AMERICAN PROSE

palters with human nature, and through his most extravagant
make-beUeve is felt the deep guiding stress of a virile love ol
life.

Perhaps the severest criticism that can be passed upon Haw-
thorne is to the effect that he is too responsible in all that he
writes and that his wish to teach is irritatingly evident. He is
not content to take life simply and frankly, he is over-anxious,
and is careful about many spiritual things. He has inherited
from his Puritan ancestors a hyperttophied conscience which
tricks him into perpetual unrest. He must always be studying
some moral problem, and he finds the problem the more interest-
ing the more pathological it is. His favorite characters are nearly
all of them a bit morbid, — nervously touched ; their world is
drained of the splendor and freedom and irresponsible joy of
nature and is discolored with something of the withering grayness
of Puritanism. When Hawthorne makes a resolute attempt at
carnality, as he now and then does in the Blithedale Romance,
we feel that he is doing himself violence and sacrificing what is
quintessential in his nature. Nor is he merely over-anxious and
over-didactic; he is at times obvious and almost naive, particu-
larly in his talk about art and in his occasional analysis of motive.
This becomes specially noticeable if he be read just after subtle
and sophisticated modern writers, masters of finesse in etiquette
and art. Many of the discussions in the Marble Faun upon
Guido and the Venus de Medici must nowadays be discreetly
waived. Many of the descriptions of antiquities and of scenery
have an unapologetic effusiveness that suggests the garrulity of the
American who is for the first time " doing " Europe. Latter-day
guide-books borrow largely from these passages, — a somewhat
dubious honor. There is little intellectual subtlety in Hawthorne,
little unalloyed study of pure artistic effect, little of that undis-
tracted preoccupation with sensation and its accompanying moods
and its suggested trains of imagery to which modern decadent
art has often surrendered itself

On the other hand, the richness and depth of Hawthorne's
nature is attested by the humor that is unmistakably present in
many of his stories and that, in the form of a tenderly tolerant
sense of the incongruities of life, is never far away even from the

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 219

most sincerely pathetic episodes. His tone is always intensely
human, never that of the cynical observer of men's foibles or of
the dilettante elaborator of aitistic effects. He loves life and
believes in life ; he believes in men and women ; and his abound-
ing tenderness and human sympathy are not really weakened or
obscured by the aloofness he maintains in his art from the crude
world of every-day experience. Even his most fantastic pieces —
such whimsical fantasies as Feathertop — are full of love for life in
its elements, and are often captivatingly genial in mood and in
tone. Through this largeness and genuineness of nature, he is for
the most part kept even in his passages of greatest unreality from
sensationalism or cheapness of effect. The melodramatic is always
false, and Hawthorne is persistently sincere and true. Now and
then a symbol or a single detail, — the Scarlet Letter, the Faun's
ears, Ethan Brand's hollow laugh, — may be unworthily insisted
upon. But the important incidents and the main situations of a
story carry conviction ; the reader has no sense of being tricked ;
he feels himself present at essential crises in the development of
human passion, and he watches with never a misgiving, human
nature revealing itself in its elements and claiming his pity or
hatred or love.

Hawthorne's prose style is as sincere and as free from meretri-
ciousness as the moods and effects it conveys. It disdains or
never thinks of smartness and eschews epigram. It has none of the
finical prettiness and unusualness of phrase that modern writers
affect. It is distinctly an old-fashioned style. It has a trace of the
reserve and self-conscious literary manner of the pre-journalistic
period. It has an occasional fondness for literary phrasing, — for
words that have the odor of libraries about them and suggest folios
and paper yellow with age. It is dilatory or at least never hurried
or eager. It uses long, lingering sentences. It leads often to smiles,
never or rarely to laughter. It is suffused with feeling. It holds
imagery and thought in solution and eddies around its subject.
It is a synthetic, emotional, and imaginative style ; not an analytic,
intellectual, and witty style. It has unsurpassable wholeness of
texture and weaves with no faltering of purpose or blurring of lines
that fabric of a dream-world in which each of Hawthorne's stories
imprisons our imaginations. It is the style of a great imaginative

220 AMERICAN PROSE

artist who communes with himself on the visions of his heart, not
the style of an alert observer of the happenings of daily life ; it is
the fitting and perfect medium for the expression of those exqui-
sitely directed and humanized dreams of symbolic beauty and truth
which, as has been noted in detail, are Hawthorne's characteristic
productions as a writer of romance.

Lewis Edwards Gates

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 221

THE PROCESSION OF LIFE

But, come ! The sun is hastening westward, while the march
of human Hfe, that never paused before, is delayed by our attempt
to rearrange its order. It is desirable to find some compre-
hensive principle, that shall render our task easier by bringing
thousands into the ranks where hitherto we have brought one.
Therefore let the trumpet, if possible, split its brazen throat with
a louder note than ever, and the herald summon all mortals who,
from whatever cause, have lost, or never found, their proper
places in the world.

Obedient to this call, a great multitude come together, most of
them with listless gait, betokening weariness of soul, yet with a
gleam of satisfaction in their faces, at a prospect of at length
reaching those positions which, hitherto, they have vainly sought.
But here will be another disappointment ; for we can attempt no
more than merely to associate, in one fraternity, all who are
afflicted with the same vague trouble. Some great mistake in life
is the chief condition of admittance into this class. Here are
members of the learned professions, whom Providence endowed
with special gifts for the plough, the forge, and the wheelbarrow, or
for the routine of unintellectual business. We will assign to them,
as partners in the march, those lowly laborers and handicraftsmen,
who have pined, as with a dying thirst, after the unattainable
fountains of knowledge. The latter have lost less than their com-
panions ; yet more, because they deem it infinite. Perchance
the two species of unfortunates may comfort one another. Here
are Quakers with the instinct of battle in them ; and men of war
who should have worn the broad brim. Authors shall be ranked
here, whom some freak of Nature, making game of her poor
children, had imbued with the confidence of genius, and strong
desire of fame, but has favored with no corresponding power ; and
others, whose lofty gifts were unaccompanied with the faculty of
expression, or any of that earthly machinery, by which ethereal
endowments must be manifested to mankind. All these, there-
fore, are melancholy laughing-stocks. Next, here are honest and
well-intentioned persons, who by a want of tact — by inaccurate

222 AMERICAN PROSE

perceptions — by a distorting imagination — have been kept con-
tinually at cross purposes with the world, and bewildered upon
the path of life. Let us see if they can confine themselves within
the line of our procession. In this class, likewise, we must assign
places to those who have encountered that worst of ill success, a
higher fortune than their abilities could vindicate ; writers, actors,
painters, the pets of a day, but whose laurels wither unrenewed
amid their hoary hair ; politicians, whom some malicious contin-
gency of affairs has thrust into conspicuous station, where, while
the world stands gazing at them, the dreary consciousness of im-
becility makes them curse their birth hour. To such men, we
give for a companion him whose rare talents, which perhaps
require a Revolution for their exercise, are buried in the tomb of
sluggish circumstances.

Not far from these, we must find room for one whose success
has been of the wrong kind ; the man who should have lingered
in the cloisters of a university, digging new treasures out of the
Herculaneum of antique lore, diffusing depth and accuracy of
literature throughout his country, and thus making for himself a
great and quiet fame. But the outward tendencies around him
have proved too powerful for his inward nature, and have drawn
him into the arena of political tumult, there to contend at disad-
vantage, whether front to front, or side by side, with the brawny
giants of actual life. He becomes, it may be, a name for brawling
parties to bandy to and fi-o, a legislator of the Union ; a governor
of his native State ; an ambassador to the courts of kings or
queens ; and the world may deem him a man of happy stars.
But not so the wise ; and not so himself, when he looks through
his experience, and sighs to miss that fitness, the one invaluable
touch which makes all things true and real. So much achieved,
yet how abortive is his life 1 Whom shall we choose for his com-
panion? Some weak framed blacksmith, perhaps, whose delicacy
of muscle might have suited a tailor's shopboard better than the
anvil.

Shall we bid the trumpet sound again ? It is hardly worth the
while. There remain a few idle men of fortune, tavern and grog-
shop loungers, lazzaroni, old bachelors, decaying maidens, and
people of crooked intellect or temper, all of whom may find their

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 223

like, or some tolerable approach to it, in the plentiful diversity of
our latter class. There too, as his ultimate destiny, must we rank
the dreamer, who, all his Ufe long, has cherished the idea that he
was peculiarly apt for something, but never could determine what
it was ; and there the most unfortunate of men, whose purpose it
has been to enjoy life's pleasures, but to avoid a manful struggle
with its toil and sorrow. The remainder, if any, may connect
themselves with whatever rank of the procession they shall find
best adapted to their tastes and consciences. The worst possible
fate would be to remain behind, shivering in the solitude of time,
while all the world is on the move towards eternity. Our attempt
to classify society is now complete. The result may be any thing
but perfect ; yet better — to give it the very lowest praise — than
the antique rule of the herald's office, or the modern one of the
tax gatherer, whereby the accidents and superficial attributes, with
which the real nature of individuals has least to do, are acted upon
as the deepest characteristics of mankind. Our task is done !
Now let the grand procession move !

Yet pause a while ! We had forgotten the Chief Marshal.

Hark ! The world-wide swell of solemn music, with the clang
of a mighty bell breaking forth through its regulated uproar,
announces his approach. He comes ; a severe, sedate, immov-
able, dark rider, waving his truncheon of universal sway, as he
passes along the lengthened line, on the pale horse of the Revela-
tion. It is Death 1 Who else could assume the guidance of a
procession that comprehends all humanity ? And if some, among
these many millions, should deem themselves classed amiss, yet
let them take to their hearts the comfortable truth, that Death
levels us all into one great brotherhood, and that another state of
being will surely rectify the wrong of this. Then breathe thy wail
upon the earth's wailing wind, thou band of melancholy music,
made up of every sigh that the human heart, unsatisfied, has
uttered ! There is yet triumph in thy tones. And now we move 1
Beggars in their rags, and Kings trailing the regal purple in the
dust ; the Warrior's gleaming helmet ; the Priest in his sable robe ;
the hoary Grandsire, who has run life's circle and come back to
childhood; the ruddy Schoolboy with his golden curls, frisking
along the march; the Artisan's stuff jacket ; the Noble's star-

224 AMERICAN PROSE

decorated coat; — the whole presenting a motley spectacle, yet
with a dusky grandeur brooding over it. Onward, onward, into
that dimness where the lights of Time, which have blazed along
the procession, are flickering in their sockets ! And whither !
We know not ; and Death, hitherto our leader, deserts us by the
wayside as the tramp of our innumerable footsteps echoes beyond
his sphere. He knows not, more than we, our destined goal.
But God, who made us, knows, and will not leave us on our toil-
some and doubtful march, either to wander in infinite uncertainty,
or perish by the way 1

[From Mosses from an Old Manse^ " The Procession of Life," 1846. The
text is that of the revised edition of 1854.]

FEATHERTOP

Dickon," cried Mother Rigby, " a coal for my pipe ! "
The pipe was in the old dame*s mouth when she said these
words. She had thrust it there after filling it with tobacco, but
without stooping to light it at the hearth, where indeed there was
no appearance of a fire having been kindled that morning. Forth-
with, however, as soon as the order was given, there was an intense
red glow out of the bowl of the pipe, and a whiff of smoke from
Mother Rigby's lips. Whence the coal came, and how brought
thither by an invisible hand, I have never been able to dis-
cover.

" Good ! " quoth Mother Rigby, with a nod of her head.
'* Thank ye, Dickon ! And now for making this scarecrow. Be
within call, Dickon, in case I need you again."

The good woman had risen thus early, (for as yet it was scarcely
sunrise,) in order to set about making a scarecrow, which she in-
tended to put in the middle of her cornpatch. It was now the
latter week of May, and the crows and blackbirds had already dis-
covered the little, green, rolled-up leaf of the Indian corn just
peeping out of the soil. She was determined, therefore, to con-
trive as lifelike a scarecrow as ever was seen, and to finish it im-
mediately, from top to toe, so that it should begin its sentineFs

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 22 C

duty that very morning. Now Mother Rigby, (as everybody
must have heard,) was one of the most cunning and potent witches
in New England, and might, with very little trouble, have made
a scarecrow ugly enough to frighten the minister himself. But
on this occasion, as she had awakened in an uncommonly pleasant
humor, and was further dulcified by her pipe of tobacco, she
resolved to produce something fine, beautiful, and splendid, rather
than hideous and horrible.

" I don*t want to set up a hobgoblin in my own cornpatch, and
almost at my own doorstep," said Mother Rigby to herself, puffing
out a whiff of smoke ; " I could do it if I pleased, but Tm tired of
doing marvellous things, and so Til keep within the bounds of
everyday business, just for variety's sake. Besides, there is no use
in scaring the little children for a mile roundabout, though 'tis
true Tm a witch."

It was settled, therefore, in her own mind, that the scarecrow
should represent a fine gentleman of the period, so far as the ma-
terials at hand would allow. Perhaps it may be as well to enumer-
ate the chief of the articles that went to the composition of this
figure.

The most important item of all, probably, although it made so
little show, was a certain broomstick, on which Mother Rigby had
taken many an airy gallop at midnight, and which now served the
scarecrow by way of a spinal column, or, as the unlearned phrase
it, a backbone. One of its arms was a disabled flail which used to
be wielded by Goodman Rigby, before his spouse worried him out
of this troublesome world ; the other, if I mistake not, was com-
posed of the pudding stick, and a broken rung of a chair, tied
loosely together at the elbow. As for its legs, the right was a hoe
handle, and the left an undistinguished and miscellaneous stick
from the woodpile. Its lungs, stomach, and other affairs of that
kind were nothing better than a meal bag stuffed with straw.
Thus we have made out the skeleton and entire corporeity of the
scarecrow, with the exception of its head ; and this was admirably
supplied by a somewhat withered and shrivelled pumpkin, in
which Mother Rigby cut two holes for the eyes, and a slit for the
mouth, leaving a bluish-colored knob in the middle to pass for a
nose. It was really quite a respectable face.
Q

226 AMERICAN PROSE

'* Tve seen worse ones on human shoulders, at any rate," said
Mother Rigby. " And many a fine gentleman has a pumpkin
head, as well as my scarecrow."

But the clothes, in this case, were to be the making of the man.
So the good old woman took down from a peg an ancient plum-
colored coat of London make, and with relics of embroidery on its
seams, cuffs, pocket flaps, and button holes, but lamentably worn
and faded, patched at the elbows, tattered at the skirts, and thread-
bare all over. On the left breast was a round hole, whence either
a star of nobility had been rent away, or else the hot heart of some
former wearer had scorched it through and through. The neigh-
bors said that this rich garment belonged to the Black Man*s
wardrobe, and that he kept it at Mother Rigby's cottage for the
convenience of slipping it on whenever he wished to make a grand
appearance at the governor's table. To match the coat there was
a velvet waistcoat of very ample size and formerly embroidered with
foliage that had been as brightly golden as the maple leaves in
October, but which had now quite vanished out of the substance
of the velvet. Next came a pair of scarlet breeches, once worn
by the French governor of Louisbourg, and the knees of which
had touched the lower step of the throne of Ix)uis le Grand. The
Frenchman had given these smallclothes to an Indian powwow,
who had parted with them to the old witch for a gill of strong
waters, at one of their dances in the forest. Furthermore, Mother
Rigby produced a pair of silk stockings and put them on the
figure's legs, where they showed as unsubstantial as a dream, with
the wooden reality of the two sticks making itself miserably ap-
parent through the holes. Lastly, she put her dead husband's wig
on the bare scalp of the pumpkin, and surmounted the whole with
a dusty three-cornered hat, in which was stuck the longest tail
feather of a rooster.

Then the old dame stood the figure up in a comer of her cottage
and chuckled to behold its yellow semblance of a visage, with its
nobby little nose thrust into the air. It had a strangely self-
satisfied aspect, and seemed to say, " Come look at me ! "

" And you are well worth looking at, that's a fact ! " quoth
Mother Rigby, in admiration at her own handiwork. " IVe made
many a puppet since I've been a witch ; but methinks this is the

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 227

finest of them all. *Tis almost too good for a scarecrow. And, by
the by, I'll just fill a fresh pipe of tobacco, and then take him out
to the cornpatch."

While filling her pipe, the old woman continued to gaze with
almost motherly affection at the figure in the corner. To say the
truth, whether it were chance, or skill, or downright witchcraft,
there was something wonderfully human in this ridiculous shape,
bedizened with its tattered finery ; and as for the countenance, it
appeared to shrivel its yellow surface into a grin — a fimny kind
of expression betwixt scorn and merriment, as if it understood
itself to be a jest at mankind. The more Mother Rigby looked
the better she was pleased.

" Dickon," cried she sharply, " another coal for my pipe ! "

Hardly had she spoken, than, just as before, there was a red-
glowing coal on the top of the tobacco. She drew in a long whiff
and puffed it forth again into the bar of morning sunshine which
struggled through the one dusty pane of her cottage window.
Mother Rigby always liked to flavor her pipe with a coal of fire
from the particular chimney corner whence this had been brought.
But where that chimney corner might be, or who brought the coal
from it — further than that the invisible messenger seemed to
respond to the name of Dickon — I cannot tell.

'*That puppet yonder," thought Mother Rigby, still with her
eyes fixed on the scarecrow, " is too good a piece of work to
stand all summer in a cornpatch, frightening away the crows and
blackbirds. He*s capable of better things. Why, IVe danced
with a worse one, when partners happened to be scarce, at our
witch meetings in the forest ! What if I should let him take his
chance among the other men of straw and empty fellows who go
bustling about the world ? "

The old witch took three or four more whiffs of her pipe and
smiled.

" He'll meet plenty of his brethren at every street comer ! "
continued she. " Well ; I didn't mean to dabble in witchcraft
to-day, further than the lighting of my pipe ; but a witch I am,
and a witch I'm likely to be, and there's no use trying to shirk it.
I'll make a man of my scarecrow^ were it only for the joke's
sake 1 "

228 AMERICAN PROSE

While muttering these words Mother Rigby took the pipe from
her own mouth and thrust it into the crevice which represented
the same feature in the pumpkin visage of the scarecrow.

" Puff, darling, puff!" said she. "Puff away, my fine fellow!
your life depends on it ! "

This was a strange exhortation, undoubtedly, to be addressed to
a mere nothing of sticks, straw, and old clothes, with nothing
better than a shrivelled pumpkin for a head ; as we know to have
been the scarecrow's case. Nevertheless, as we must carefully
hold in remembrance, Mother Rigby was a witch of singular power
and dexterity ; and, keeping this fact duly before our minds, we
shall see nothing beyond credibility in the remarkable incidents of
our story. Indeed, the great difficulty will be at once got over, if
we can only bring ourselves to believe that, as soon as the old
dame bade him puff, there came a whiff of smoke from the scare-
crow's mouth. It was the very feeblest of whiffs, to be sure ; but
it was followed by another and another, each more decided than
the preceding one.

" Puff away, my pet ! puff away, my pretty one ! " Mother
Rigby kept repeating, with her pleasantest smile. " It is the
breath of life to ye ; and that you may take my word for."

Beyond all question the pipe was bewitched. There must have
been a spell either in the tobacco or in the fiercely-glowing coal
that so mysteriously burned on the top of it, or in the pungently-
aromatic smoke which exhaled from the kindled weed. The
figure, after a few doubtful attempts, at length blew forth a volley
of smoke extending all the way from the obscure comer into the
bar of sunshine. There it eddied and melted away among the
motes of dust. It seemed a convulsive effort ; for the two or three
next whiffs were fainter, although the coal still glowed and threw
a gleam over the scarecrow's visage. The old witch clapped her
skinny hands together, and smiled encouragingly upon her handi-
work. She saw that the charm worked well. The shrivelled, yel-
low face, which heretofore had been no face at all, had already a
thin, fantastic haze, as it were, of human likeness, shifting to and
fro across it ; sometimes vanishing entirely, but growing more per-
ceptible than ever with the next whiff from the pipe. The whole
figure, in like manner, assumed a show of hfe, such as we impart

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 229

to ill-defined shapes among the clouds, and half deceive ourselves
with the pastime of our own fancy.

If we must needs pry closely into the matter, it may be doubted
whether there was any real change, after all, in the sordid, wornout,
worthless, and ill-jointed substance of the scarecrow ; but merely
a spectral illusion, and a cunning effect of light and shade so
colored and contrived as to delude the eyes of most men. The
miracles of witchcraft seem always to have had a very shallow
subtlety ; and, at least, if the above explanation do not hit the truth
of the process, I can suggest no better.

" Well puffed, my pretty lad ! *' still cried old Mother Rigby.
" Come, another good stout whiff, and let it be with might and
main. Puff for thy life, I tell thee ! Puff out of the very bot-
tom of thy heart ; if any heart thou hast, or any bottom to it !
Well done, again ! Thou didst suck in that mouthful as if for the
pure love of it."

And then the witch beckoned to the scarecrow, throwing so
much magnetic potency into her gesture that it seemed as if it
must inevitably be obeyed, like the mystic call of the loadstone
when it summons the iron.

" Why lurkest thou in the corner, lazy one ? " said she. " Step
forth ! Thou hast the world before thee ! "

Upon my word, if the legend were not one which I heard on
my grandmother*s knee, and which had established its place
among things credible before my childish judgment could analyze
its probability, I question whether I should have the face to tell
it now.

In obedience to Mother Rigby's word, and extending its arm
as if to reach her outstretched hand, the figure made a step for-
ward — a kind of hitch and jerk, however, rather than a step —
then tottered and almost lost its balance. What could the witch
expect? It was nothing, after all, but a scarecrow stuck upon two
sticks. But the strong-willed old beldam scowled, and beckoned,
and flung the energy of her purpose so forcibly at this poor com-
bination of rotten wood, and musty straw, and ragged garments,
that it was compelled to show itself a man, in spite of the reality
of things. So it stepped into the bar of sunshine. There it
stood — poor devil of a contrivance that it was ! — with only the

230 AMERICAN PBOSE

thinnest vesture of human similitude about it, through which was
evident the stiff, rickety, incongruous, faded, tattered, good-for-
nothing patchwork of its substance, ready to sink in a heap upon
the floor, as conscious of its own unworthiness to be erect. Shall
I confess the truth ? At its present point of vivification, the scare-
crow reminds me of some of the lukewarm and abortive charac-
ters, composed of heterogeneous materials, used for the thousandth
time, and never worth using, with which romance writers, (and
myself, no doubt, among the rest,) have so overpeopled the world
of fiction.

But the fierce old hag began to get angry and show a glimpse
of her diabolic nature, (like a snake's head, peeping with a hiss
out of her bosom,) at this pusillanimous behavior of the thing
which she had taken the trouble to put together.

" Puff away, wretch ! " cried she, wrathfully. "Puff, puff, puff,
thou thing of straw and emptiness ! thou rag or two ! thou meal
bag ! thou pumpkin head 1 thou nothing ! Where shall I find a
name vile enough to call thee by? Puff, I say, and suck in thy
fantastic life along with the smoke ; else I snatch the pipe from
thy mouth and hurl thee where that red coal came from."

Thus threatened, the unhappy scarecrow had nothing for it but
to puff away for dear life. As need was, therefore, it applied it-
self lustily to the pipe and sent forth such abundant volleys of
tobacco smoke that the small cottage kitchen became all vaporous.
The one sunbeam struggled mistily through, and could but imper-
fectly define the image of the cracked and dusty window pane
on the opposite wall. Mother Rigby, meanwhile, with one brown
arm akimbo and the other stretched towards the figure, loomed
grimly amid the obscurity with such port and expression as when
she was wont to heave a ponderous nightmare on her victims and
stand at the bedside to enjoy their agony. In fear and trembling
did this poor scarecrow puff. But its efforts, it must be acknow-
ledged, served an excellent purpose; for, with each successive
whiff, the figure lost more and more of its dizzy and perplexing
tenuity and seemed to take denser substance. Its very garments,
moreover, partook of the magical change, and shone with the
gloss of novelty and glistened with the skilfully embroidered gold
that had long ago been rent away. And, half revealed among

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 23 1

the smoke, a yellow visage bent its lustreless eyes on Mother
Rigby.

At last the old witch clinched her fist and shook it at the figure.
Not that she was positively angry, but merely acting on the prin-
ciple — perhaps untrue, or not the only truth, though as high a
one as Mother Rigby could be expected to attain — that feeble
and torpid natures, being incapable of better inspiration, must be
stirred up by fear. But here was the crisis. Should she fail in
what she now sought to effect, it was her ruthless purpose to scat-
ter the miserable simulacre into its original elements.

" Thou hast a man's aspect," said she, sternly. " Have also
the echo and mockery of a voice ! I bid thee speak ! "

The scarecrow gasped, struggled, and at length emitted a mur-
mur, which was so incorporated with its smoky breath that you
could scarcely tell whether it were indeed a voice or only a whiff
of tobacco. Some narrators of this legend hold the opinion that
Mother Rigby*s conjurations and the fierceness of her will had
compelled a familiar spirit into the figure, and that the voice
was his.

" Mother," mumbled the poor stifled voice, ** be not so awful
with me ! I would fain speak ; but being without wits, what can I
say?"

" Thou canst speak, darling, canst thou ? " cried Mother Rigby,
relaxing her grim countenance into a smile. "And what shalt
thou say, quotha ! Say, indeed ! Art thou of the brotherhood
of the empty skull, and demandest of me what thou shalt say?
Thou shalt say a thousand things, and saying them a thousand
times over, thou shalt still have said nothing 1 Be not afraid, I
tell thee ! When thou comest into the world, (whither I purpose
sending thee forthwith,) thou shalt not lack the wherewithal to
talk. Talk ! Why, thou shalt babble like a mill stream, if thou
wilt. Thou hast brains enough for that, I trow ! "

" At your service, mother," responded the figure.

"And that was well said, my pretty one," answered Mother
Rigby. "Then thou spakest like thyself, and meant nothing.
Thou shalt have a hundred such set phrases, and ^vt hundred to
the boot of them. And now, darling, I have taken so much pains
with thee, and thou art so beautiful, that, by my titath, I love thee

232 AMERICAN PROSE

better than any witch's puppet in the world ; and I Ve made them
of all sorts — clay, wax, straw, sticks, night fog, morning mist,
sea foam, and chimney smoke. But thou art the very best. So
give heed to what I say."

"Yes, kind mother," said the figure, " with all my heart ! "

"With all thy heart ! " cried the old witch, setting her hands to
her sides and laughing loudly. " Thou hast such a pretty way of
speaking. With all thy heart ! And thou didst put thy hand to
the left side of thy waistcoat as if thou really hadst one ! **

So now, in high good humor with this fantastic contrivance of
hers. Mother Rigby told the scarecrow that it must go and play its
part in the great world, where not one man in a hundred, she
affirmed, was gifted with more real substance than itself. And,
that he might hold up his . head with the best of them, she
endowed him, on the spot, with an unreckonable amount of
wealth. It consisted partly of a gold mine in Eldorado, and of
ten thousand shares in a broken bubble, and of half a million
acres of vineyard at the North Pole, and of a castle in the air,
and a chateau in Spain, together with all the rents and income
therefrom accruing. She further made over to him the cargo of a
certain ship, laden with salt of Cadiz, which she herself, by her
necromantic arts, had caused to founder, ten years before, in the
deepest part of mid ocean. If the salt were not dissolved, and
could be brought to market, it would fetch a pretty penny among
the fishermen. That he might not lack ready money, she gave
him a copper farthing of Birmingham manufacture, being all the
coin she had about her, and likewise a great deal of brass, which
she applied to his forehead, thus making it yellower than ever.

" With that brass alone," quoth Mother Rigby, " thou canst pay
thy way all over the earth. Kiss me, pretty darling ! I have done
my best for thee."

Furthermore, that the adventurer might lack no possible advan-
tage towards a fair start in life, this excellent old dame gave him
a token by which he was to introduce himself to a certain magis-
trate, member of the council, merchant, and elder of the church,
(the four capacities constituting but one man,) who stood at the
head of society in the neighboring metropolis. The token was
neither more nor less than a single word, which Mother Rigby

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 233

whispered to the scarecrow, and which the scarecrow was to
whisper to the merchant.

" Gouty as the old fellow is, he'll run thy errands for thee, when
once thou hast given him that word in his ear," said the old witch.
" Mother Rigby knows the worshipful Justice Gookin, and the wor-
shipful Justice knows Mother Rigby ! **

Here the witch thrust her wrinkled face close to the puppet's,
chuckling irrepressibly, and fidgeting all through her system, with
delight at the idea which she meant to communicate.

" The worshipful Master Gookin," whispered she, " hath a comely
maiden to his daughter. And hark ye, my pet ! Thou hast a fair
outside, and a pretty wit enough of thine own. Yea, a pretty wit
enough ! Thou wilt think better of it when thou hast seen more
of other people's wits. Now, with thy outside and thy inside, thou
art the very man to win a young girl's heart. Never doubt it ! I
tell thee it shall be so. Put but a b6ld face on the matter, sigh,
smile, flourish thy hat, thrust forth thy leg like a dancing master,
put thy right hand to the left side of thy waistcoat, and pretty
Polly Gookin is thine own ! "

All this while the new creature had been sucking in and exhal-
ing the vapory fragrance of his pipe, and seemed now to continue
this occupation as much for the enjoyment it afforded as because
it was an essential condition of his existence. It was wonderful
to see how exceedingly like a human being it behaved. Its eyes,
(for it appeared to possess a pair,) were bent on Mother Rigby,
and at suitable junctures it nodded or shook its head. Neither
did it lack words proper for the occasion : " Really ! Indeed !
Pray tell me ! Is it possible ! Upon my word ! By no means !
O ! Ah ! Hem ! " and other such weighty utterances as imply
attention, inquiry, acquiescence, or dissent on the part of the
auditor. Even had you stood by and seen the scarecrow made
you could scarcely have resisted the conviction that it perfectly
understood the cunning counsels which the old witch poured into
its counterfeit of an ear. The more earnestly it applied its lips
to the pipe the more distinctly was its human likeness stamped
among visible realities, the more sagacious grew its expression, the
more lifelike its gestures and movements, and the more intelligibly
audible its voice. Its garments, too, glistened so much the brighter

234 AMERICAN PROSE

with an illusory magnificence. The very pipe, in which buraed the
spell of all this wonderwork, ceased to appear as a smoke-blackened
earthen stump, and became a meerschaum, with painted bowl and
amber mouthpiece.

It might be apprehended, however, that as the life of the illu-
sion seemed identical with the vapor of the pipe, it would termi-
nate simultaneously with the reduction of the tobacco to ashes.
But the beldam foresaw the difficulty.

" Hold thou the pipe, my precious one," said she, "while I fill
it for thee again."

It was sorrowful to behold how the fine gentleman began to
fade back into a scarecrow while Mother Rigby shook the ashes
out of the pipe and proceeded to replenish it from her tobacco
box.

" Dickon," cried she, in her high, sharp tone, " another coal for
this pipe ! "

No sooner said than the intensely red speck of fire was glowing
within the pipe bowl ; and the scarecrow, without waiting for the
witch's bidding, applied the tube to his lips and drew in a few
short, convulsive whiffs, which soon, however, became regular and
equable.

" Now, mine own heart's darling," quoth Mother Rigby, " what-
ever may happen to thee, thou must stick to thy pipe. Thy life is
in it ; and that, at least, thou knowest well, if thou knowest nought
besides. Stick to thy pipe, I say ! Smoke, puff, blow thy cloud ;
and tell the people, if any question be made, that it is for thy
health, and that so the physician orders thee to do. And, sweet
one, when thou shalt find thy pipe getting low, go apart into some
corner, and, (first filling thyself with smoke,) cry sharply, ' Dickon,
a fresh pipe of tobacco ! ' and, * Dickon, another coal for my pipe ! '
and have it into thy pretty mouth as speedily as may be. Else, in-
stead of a gallant gentleman in a gold-laced coat, thou wilt be but
a jumble of sticks and tattered clothes, and a bag of straw, and a
withered pumpkin ! Now depart, my treasure, and good luck go
with thee ! "

" Never fear, mother ! " said the figure, in a stout voice, and
sending forth a courageous whiff of smoke. " I will thrive, if an
honest man and a gentleman may ! "

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 2^$

" O, thou wilt be the death of me ! " cried the old witch, con-
vulsed with laughter. **That was well said. If an honest man
and a gentleman may ! Thou playest thy part to perfection. Get
along with thee for a smart fellow ; and I will wager on thy head,
as a man of pith and substance, with a brain, and what they call
a heart, and all else that a man should have, against any other
thing on two legs. I hold myself a better witch than yesterday,
for thy sake. Did not I make thee ? And I defy any witch in
New England to make such another ! Here ; take my staff along
with thee ! "

The staff, though it was but a plain oaken stick, immediately
took the aspect of a gold-headed cane.

" That gold head has as much sense in it as thine own," said
Mother Rigby, " and it will guide thee straight to worshipful Mas-
ter Gookin's door. Get thee gone, my pretty pet, my darling, my
precious one, ray treasure ; and if any ask thy name, it is Feather-
top. For thou hast a feather in thy hat, and I have thrust a hand-
ful of feathers into the hollow of thy head, and thy wig too is
of the fashion they call Feathertop, — so be Feathertop thy
name ! "

And, issuing from the cottage, Feathertop strode manfully towards
town. Mother Rigby stood at the threshold, well pleased to see
how the sunbeams glistened on him, as if all his magnificence were
real, and how diligently and lovingly he smoked his pipe, and how
handsomely he walked, in spite of a little stiffness of his legs. She
watched him until out of sight, and threw a witch benediction after
her darling, when a turn of the road snatched him from her view.

[From Mosses from an Old Manser "Feathertop; a Moralized Legend."
Revised edition of 1854.]

THE REVELATION OF THE SCARLET LETTER

The eloquent voice, on which the souls of the listening audience
had been borne aloft as on the swelling waves of the sea, at length
came to a pause. There was a momentary silence, profound as
what should follow the utterance of oracles. Then ensued a mur-

236 AMERICAN PROSE

mur and half-hushed tumult ; as if the auditors, released from the
high spell that had transported them into the region of another's
mind, were returning into themselves, with all their awe and won-
der still heavy on them. In a moment more, the crowd began to
gush forth from the doors of the church. Now that there was an
end, they needed other breath, more fit to support the gross and
earthly life into which they relapsed, than that atmosphere which
the preacher had converted into words of flame, and had burdened
with the rich fragrance of his thought.

In the open air their rapture broke into speech. The street
and the market-place absolutely babbled, from side to side, with
applauses of the minister. His hearers could not rest until they
had told one another of what each knew better than he could tell
or hear. According to their united testimony, never had man
spoken in so wise, so high, and so holy a spirit, as he that spake
this day; nor had inspiration ever breathed through mortal lips
more evidently than it did through his. Its influence could be
seen, as it were, descending upon him, and possessing him, and
continually lifting him out of the written discourse that lay before
him, and filling him with ideas that must have been as marvellous
to himself as to his audience. His subject, it appeared, had been
the relation between the Deity and the communities of mankind,
with a special reference to the New England which they were here
planting in the wilderness. And, as he drew towards the close, a
spirit as of prophecy had come upon him, constraining him to its
purpose as mightily as the old prophets of Israel were constrained ;
only with its difference, that, whereas the Jewish seers had de-
nounced judgments and ruin on their country, it was his mission
to foretell a high and glorious destiny for the newly gathered
people of the Lord. But, throughout it all, and through the
whole discourse, there had been a certain deep, sad undertone
of pathos, which could not be interpreted otherwise than as the
natural regret of one soon to pass away. Yes ; their minister whom
they so loved — and who so loved them all, that he could not de-
part heavenward without a sigh — had the foreboding of untimely
death upon him, and would soon leave them in their tears ! This
idea of his transitory stay on earth gave the last emphasis to the
effect which the preacher had produced ; it was as if an angel, in

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 237

his passage to thie skies, had shaken his bright wings over the
people for an instant, — at once a shadow and a splendor, — and
had shed down a shower of golden truths upon them.

Thus, there had come to the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale — as
to most men, in their various spheres, though seldom recognized
until they see it far behind them — an epoch of life more brilliant
and full of triumph than any previous one, or than any which could
hereafter be. He stood, at this moment, on the very proudest
eminence of superiority, to which the gifts of intellect, rich lore,
prevailing eloquence, and a reputation of whitest sanctity, could
exalt a clergyman in New England's earliest days, when the pro-
fessional character was of itself a lofty pedestal. Such was the
position which the minister occupied, as he bowed his head for-
ward on the cushions of the pulpit, at the close of his Election
Sermon. Meanwhile Hester Prynne was standing beside the scaf-
fold of the pillory, with the scarlet letter still burning on her
breast !

Now was heard again the clangor of music, and the measured
tramp of the military escort, issuing from the church-door. The
procession was to be marshalled thence to the town-hall, where
a solemn banquet would complete the ceremonies of the day.

Once more, therefore, the train of venerable and majestic fathers
was seen moving through a broad pathway of the people, who drew
back reverently, on either side, as the Gk)vernor and magistrates,
the old and wise men, the holy ministers, and all that were eminent
and renowned, advanced in the midst of them. When they were
fairly in the market-place, their presence was greeted by a shout.
This — though doubtless it might acquire additional force and vol-
ume from the childlike loyalty which the age awarded to its rulers
— was felt to be an irrepressible outburst of enthusiasm kindled
in the auditors by that high strain of eloquence which was yet
reverberating in their ears. Each felt the impulse in himself,
and, in the same breath, caught it from his neighbor. Within the
church, it had hardly been kept down ; beneath the sky, it pealed up-
ward to the zenith. There were human beings enough, and enough
of highly wrought and symphonious feeling, to produce that more
impressive sound than the organ tones of the blast, or the thunder,
or the roar of the sea; even that mighty swell of many voices,

238 AMERICAN PROSE

blended into one great voice by the universal impulse which makes
likewise one vast heart out of the many. Never, from the soil of
New England, had gone up such a shout ! Never, on New England
soil, had stood the man so honored by his mortal brethren as the
preacher !

How fared it with him then? Were there not the brilliant
particles of a halo in the air about his head ? So etherealized by
spirit as he was, and so apotheosized by worshipping admirers, did
his footsteps, in the procession, really tread upon the dust of earth ?

As the ranks of military men and civil fathers moved onward,
all eyes were turned towards the point where the minister was seen
to approach among them. The shout died into a murmur, as one
portion of the crowd after another obtained a glimpse of him.
How feeble and pale he looked, amid all his triumph ! The
energy — or say, rather, the inspiration which had held him up
until he should have delivered the sacred message that brought its
own strength along with it from Heaven — was withdrawn, now
that it had so faithfully performed its office. The glow, which
they had just before beheld burning on his cheek, was extinguished,
like a flame that sinks down hopelessly among the late-decaying
embers. It seemed hardly the face of a man alive, with such a
deathlike hue ; it was hardly a man with life in him that tottered
on his path so nervelessly, yet tottered, and did not fajl !

One of his clerical brethren, — it was the venerable John Wilson,
— observing the state in which Mr. Dimmesdale was left by the
retiring wave of intellect and sensibility, stepped forward hastily
to offer his support. The minister tremulously, but decidedly,
repelled the old man's arm. He still walked onward, if that move-
ment could be so described, which rather resembled the wavering
effort of an infant with its mother's arms in view, outstretched to
tempt him forward. And now, almost imperceptible as were the
latter steps of his progress, he had come opposite the well-
remembered and weather-darkened scaffold, where, long since,
with all that dreary lapse of time between, Hester Prynne had
encountered the world's ignominious stare. There stood Hester,
holding little Pearl by the hand ! And there was the scarlet letter
on her breast ! The minister here made a pause, although the
music still played the. stately and rejoicing march to which the

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 239

procession moved. It summoned him onward, — onward to
the festival ! — but here he made a pause.

Bellingham, for the last few moments, had kept an anxious eye
upon him. He now left his own place in the procession, and
advanced to give assistance, judging, from Mr. Dimmesdale's
aspect, that he must otherwise inevitably fall. But there was
something in the latter's expression that warned back the
magistrate, although a man not readily obeying the vague intima-
tions that pass from one spirit to another. The crowd, mean-
while, looked on with awe and wonder. This earthly faintness
was, in their view, only another phase of the minister's celestial
strength; nor would it have seemed a miracle too high to be
wrought for one so holy, had he ascended before their eyes, wax-
ing dimmer and brighter, and fading at last into the light of
heaven.

He turned towards the scaffold, and stretched forth his arms.

" Hester," said he, " come hither ! Come, my little Pearl ! "

It was a ghastly look with which he regarded them ; but there
was something at once tender and strangely triumphant in it. The
child, with the bird-like motion which was one of her characteris-
tics, flew to him, and clasped her arms about his knees. Hester
Pr5mne — slowly, as if impelled by inevitable fate, and against her
strongest will — likewise drew near, but paused before she reached
him. At this instant, old Roger Chillingworth thrust himself
through the crowd, — or, perhaps, so dark, disturbed, and evil,
was his look, he rose up out of some nether region, — to snatch
back his victim from what he sought to do ! Be that as it might,
the old man rushed forward, and caught the minister by the arm.

"Madman, hold! what is your purpose?" whispered he.
" Wave back that woman ! Cast off this child ! All shall be well !
Do not blacken your fame, and perish in dishonor ! I can yet save
you ! Would you bring infamy on your sacred profession ? "

" Ha, tempter ! Methinks thou art too late ! " answered the
minister, encountering his eye, fearfully, but firmly. " Thy power
is not what it was ! With God's help, I shall escape thee now ! "

He again extended his hand to the woman of the scarlet letter.

" Hester Prynne," cried he, with a piercing earnestness, " in the
name of Him, so terrible and so merciful, who gives me grace, at

240 AMERICAN PROSE

this last moment, to do what — for my own heavy sin and misera-
ble agony — I withheld myself from doing seven years ago, come
hither now, and twine thy strength about me ! Thy strength,
Hester ; but let it be guided by the will which God hath granted
me ! This wretched and wronged old man is opposing it with all
his might ! with all his own might, and the fiend's ! Come, Hester,
come ! Support me up yonder scaffold ! "

The crowd was in a tumult. The men of rank and dignity, who
stood more immediately around the clergyman, were so taken by
surprise, and so perplexed as to the purport of what they saw, —
unable to receive the explanation which most readily presented
itself, or to imagine any other, — that they remained silent and
inactive spectators of the judgment which Providence seemed
about to work. They beheld the minister, leaning on Hester's
shoulder, and supported by her arm around him, approach the
scaffold, and ascend its steps ; while still the little hand of the sin-
born child was clasped in his. Old Roger Chillingworth followed,
as one intimately connected with the drama of guilt and sorrow in
which they had all been actors, and well entitled, therefore, to be
present at its closing scene.

" Hadst thoii sought the whole earth over," said he, looking
darkly at the clergyman, " there was no one place so secret, — no
high place nor lowly place, where thou couldst have escaped me,
— save on this very scaflfold ! "

" Thanks be to Him who hath led me hither ! " answered the
minister.

Yet he trembled, and turned to Hester with an expression of
doubt and anxiety in his eyes, not the less evidently betrayed, that
there was a feeble smile upon his lips.

" Is not this better," murmured he, " than what we dreamed of
in the forest?"

" I know not ! I know not ! " she hurriedly replied. " Better?
Yea ; so we may both die, and little Pearl die with us ! "

" For thee and Pearl, be it as God shall order," said the minis-
ter ; " and God is merciful ! Let me now do the will which He
hath made plain before my sight. For, Hester, I am a dying
man. So let me make haste to take my shame upon me ! "

Partly supported by Hester Prynne, and holding one hand of

ik^

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 24!

little PearFs, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale turned to the dig-
nified and venerable rulers ; to the holy ministers, who were his
brethren ; to the people, whose great heart was thoroughly
appalled, yet overflowing with tearful sympathy, as knowing that
some deep life-matter — which, if full of sin, was full of anguish
and repentance likewise — was now to be laid open to them.
The sun, but little past its meridian, shone down upon the clergy-
man, and gave a distinctness to his figure, as he stood out from all
the earth, to put in his plea of guilty at the bar of Eternal Justice.

" People of New England ! " cried he, with a voice that rose
over them, high, solemn, and majestic, — yet had always a tremor
through it, and sometimes a shriek, struggling up out of a fathom-
less depth of remorse and woe, — " ye, that have loved me ! — ye,
that have deemed me holy ! — behold me here, the one sinner of
the world ! At last ! — at last ! — I stand upon the spot where,
seven years since, I should have stood ; here, with this woman,
whose arm, more than the little strength wherewith I have crept
hitherward, sustains me, at this dreadful moment, from grovelling
down upon my face ! Lo, the scarlet letter which Hester wears !
Ye have all shuddered at it ! Wherever her walk hath been, —
wherever, so miserably burdened, she may have hoped to find
repose, — it hath cast a lurid gleam of awe and horrible repug-
nance round about her. But there stood one in the midst of you,
at whose brand of sin and infamy ye have not shuddered ! "

It sqemed, at this point, as if the minister must leave the
remainder of his story undisclosed. But he fought back the
bodily weakness, — and, still more, the faintness of heart, — that
was striving for the mastery with him. He threw off" all assist-
ance, and stepped passionately forward a pace before the woman
and the child.

'* It was on him ! " he continued, with a kind of fierceness ; so
determined was he to speak out the whole. " God's eye beheld
it 1 The angels were forever pointing at it ! The Devil knew it
well, and fretted it continually with the touch of his burning
finger ! But he hid it cunningly from men, and walked among
you with the mien of a spirit, mournful, because so pure in a sinful
world ! — and sad, because he missed his heavenly kindred !
Now, at the death-hour, he stands up before you ! He bids you

242 AMERICAN PROSE

look again at Hester's scarlet letter ! He tells you, that, with all
its mysterious horror, it is but the shadow of what he bears on his
own breast, and that even this, his own red stigma, is no more
than the type of what has seared his inmost heart ! Stand any
here that question God*s judgment on a sinner? Behold ! Be-
hold a dreadful witness of it ! *'

With a convulsive motion, he tore away the ministerial band
from before his breast. It was revealed ! But it were irreverent
to describe that revelation. For an instant, the gaze of the
horror-stricken multitude was concentred on the ghastly miracle ;
while the minister stood, with a flush of triumph in his face, as
one who, in the crisis of acutest pain, had won a victory. Then,
down he sank upon the scaffold ! Hester partly raised him, and
supported his head against her bosom. Old Roger Chillingworth
knelt down beside him, with a blank, dull countenance, out of
which the life seemed to have departed.

"Thou hast escaped me!" he repeated more than once.
" Thou hast escaped me ! "

" May God forgive thee ! *' said the minister. "Thou, too, hast
deeply sinned ! "

He withdrew his dying eyes from the old man, and fixed them
on the woman and the child.

" My little Pearl," said he, feebly, — and there was a sweet and
gentle smile over his face, as of a spirit sinking into deep repose ;
nay, now that the burden was removed, it seemed almost as if he
would be sportive with the child, — " dear little Pearl, wilt thou
kiss me now ? Thou wouldst not, yonder, in the forest ! But
now thou wilt ? "

Pearl kissed his lips. A spell was broken. The great scene of
grief, in which the wild infant bore a part, had developed all her
sympathies; and as her tears fell upon her i&ther's cheek, they
were the pledge that she would grow up amid human joy and
sorrow, nor forever do battle with the world, but be a woman in it.
Towards her mother, too, PearPs errand as a messenger of anguish
was all fulfilled.

" Hester," said the clergyman, " farewell 1 "

"Shall we not meet again?" whispered she, bending her fece
down close to his. "Shall we not spend our immortal life

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 243

together? Surely, surely, we have ransomed one another, with all
this woe ! Thou lookest far into eternity, with those bright dying
eyes ! Then tell me what thou seest ? *'

" Hush, Hester, hush ! " said he, with tremulous solemnity.
" The law we broke ! — the sin here so awfully revealed ! — let
these alone be in thy thoughts ! I fear ! I fear ! It may be
that, when we forgot our God, — when we violated our reverence
each for the other's soul, — it was thenceforth vain to hope that
we could meet hereafter, in an everlasting and pure reunion.
God knows ; and he is merciful ! He hath proved his mercy,
most of all, in my afflictions. By giving me this burning torture
to bear upon my breast ! By sending yonder dark and terrible
old man, to keep the torture always at red -heat ! By bringing me
hither, to die this death of triumphant ignominy before the
people ! Had either of these agonies been wanting, I had been
lost forever ! Praised be his name ! His will be done ! Fare-
well ! "

That final word came forth with the minister's expiring breath.
The multitude, silent till then, broke out in a strange, deep voice
of awe and wonder, which could not as yet find utterance, save in
this murmur that rolled so heavily after the departed spirit.

\^The Scarlet Letter^ a Romance^ 1850, chapter 23, "The Revelation of
the Scarlet Letter." The text is that of the first edition.]

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

[Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born in Portland, Me., Feb. 27, 1807,
and died in Cambridge, Mass., March 24, 1882. He came of good English
stock, and could trace bis descent on one side from John Alden, whose wooing
he celebrated in his Courtship of Miles Standish. He graduated at Bowdoin
College, where Hawthorne was his classmate, in 1825, and spent three years
in France, Spain, Italy, and Germany, preparing himself for the duties of the
professorship of modern languages at Bowdoin. He held this chair six years,
relinquishing it when he was appointed to succeed Ticknor as Smith professor
of modern languages at Harvard College. In preparation for his new and more
distinguished duties he spent another year abroad, enlarging his acquaintance
with the Teutonic languages. He occupied the Harvard chair from 1836
until 1854, living in the old and beautiful Craigie House, and breaking the
steady round of his academic duties only by a third visit to Europe in 1843.
The remainder of his life was spent in Cambridge, with the exception of a
final visit, in 1868, to Europe, where he received the degree of D.C.L. from
Oxford, and that of LL.D. from Cambridge. His bust has been placed in the
Poets* Corner at Westminster Abbey. Longfellow's character was remarkably
serene, sane, and well balanced. He was an urbane man, who held himself
apart from literary jealousies, and devoted himself completely to his studies,
his art, and his friends, among whom were many distinguished and noble
men. His country should be grateful to him not only for his literary produc-
tions, but for his long and earnest studies in the European literatures, — studies
which, as a teacher, he did much to make congenial and permanent in
American universities.

Longfellow's prose works of importance are three in number, Outre-Mer
(1833-34), Hyperion (1839), and Kavanagh (1849). The first two are based
on his early experiences in foreign travel, and reveal his delight in the study
of foreign literatures; but they also reflect the tastes and tendencies of his
generation, and express a mood or stage in our national life and literature.]

Prose, at its best, differs from poetry in form rather than in
spirit. Verse and prose fiction certainly are closely related
divisions of literary art, and it would be no impossible task to
transmute the one into the other. If the idea of the correlation
and conservation of forces marks the principal advance of science
in the nineteenth century, it is of similar importance that literary

244

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 24S

criticism has discovered or rediscovered, within the same period,
the relativity and transmutability of genius. Ivanhoe might have
been written in the four-beat measure of Marmion, and The Lady
of the Lake might have been made to take its place beside The
Bride of Latntnertnoor, More obvious examples of the novel in
verse are Evangeline, or the rapidly moving Aurora Leigh, and
Lucile; while we have but to set side by side the best tales and
the most characteristic poems of Poe, or the prose paragraphs
and the metrical proverbs of Emerson, to perceive the compara-
tive unimportance of the choice of the vehicle of expression.

It was natural, then, that Longfellow, the Mendelssohn of Amer-
ican literature, should show in his prose-writings the tendencies
characterizing his verse, especially as the former appeared in the
earlier part of his life and literary career, when his mind and genius
were most deeply touched by the time-spirit of sentimental roman-
ticism. The United States, in Longfellow's early manhood, was
astir with the enthusiasms of youth, and not unaffected by the
irregular passions and imperfect aspirations of juvenility. Studious
and even intellectual in a way, it was sadly in need of the benign
influences of culture ; and culture was not to be had without some
sincere search. Social and literary provinciality were made mani-
fest by undue self-assertion on the one hand, and by humble def-
erence to foreign opinion on the other. But foreign opinion very
naturally meant, in New England, English opinion of the conven-
tional or academic order, while outside of New England, in the
Jefifersonian portions of the new republic, it was too generally
synonymous with the excited and irregular pronouncements of
French radicalism or the "Napoleonic idea."

In these complex circumstances the influence of the gentle
calmness of an Irving and the cool austerity of a Bryant were
clearly salutary ; but neither of these — our earliest authors in the
true sense — was able to do for a large public, in a notable time,
exactly what Longfellow accomplished. Longfellow's mind was
always peculiarly susceptible to influences from without; the
vicious injustice of Poe's title, Mr, Longfellow and Other Pla-
giarists, contained an element of truth. A plagiarist he certainly
was not ; an unconscious imitator at times he was ; while more
than once he was the disciple in presence of the master. His

246 AMERICAN PROSE

prose style was not unaffected by that of the author of the Sketch*
Book \ some of his contributions to the volume of Miscellaneous
Poems from the United States Literary Gazette closely resembled
the work, in the same pages, of the writer of Thanatopsis ; still
later not only the spirit but the metrical forms of Heine reappeared
in many a lyric of the heart, sung by the banks of Charles ; the
trochaic tetrameter of Hiawatha was an adaptation ; and last of
all the great Florentine less obviously, but not less truly, dominated
the thought and style of his translator.

But if the foreign sketches entitled Outre-Mer, the entire ro-
mance of Hyperion f and even the more distinctly New England
story oi Kavanaghy show little originality, our debt to them remains
deep and lasting. It was because Longfellow was so quickly recep-
tive that he caught so much of the sweetness of rural France, the
faded grandeur of the Castilian country, the secret of the time of
troubadour or minnesinger, and, above all, the perennial fascina-
tion of mediaeval Germany. As an American he well knew and
fully shared the aspirations of his own people ; as a citizen of the
world he gathered up and brought home rich spoils from foreign
lands, to be utilized in the western states in a day when intelligent
guidance was peculiarly necessary. No other did, or could do, so
much in this line of salutary effort. The prevalent sentimentality
of the time, Longfellow raised into sentiment ; his panorama of
European life was set before American eyes in a suggestive, as
well as pleasing, manner ; while, in his chief prose work, Hyperion^
he caught and kept and made immediately serviceable the very
moonshine and mystery of transcendental romance. The chapter
near the close of the work, entitled Footprints of Angels , is written
in a style which seems as far removed from current literary fash-
ions as the steel- engraved " embellishments " of the Philadelphia
magazines of the forties are removed from an etching by Whistler.
But such a chapter did more than make the impressionable youths
of the period write " how beautiful " upon the margin of the be-
loved volume ; it induced them to transmute feeling into action
and vague sentiment into purposeful endeavor. The difference
between 1839 ^^^ ^^7^ is merely the difference between the mor-
tuary inscription which Longfellow made the heart of this chapter
and the text of the whole romance, and the brisk Saxon motto

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 247

which, thirty years after, Edward Everett Hale wrote as the prac-
tical creed of Ten Times One Clubs or Look-up Legions, The
words are very different ; the purpose is one.

One must ask, however, in the case of any work of art, whether
its form and inherent value have outlasted the time of production.
Utility is good, but it does not make literature. Is Longfellow's
prose to be remanded to the shelf of the collection of bibliographi-
cal varieties, along with the French and Spanish text-books which
he so painstakingly prepared for the crude collegians of our essen-
tially provincial Httle seminaries of the early day? Driftwood yf2&
the title prefixed by him to his fugitive essays in prose ; the very
title of Outre- Me r has been used again for the benefit of a gen-
eration of readers that knows not Joseph ; and few indeed will
agree with Emerson — here, as usually, an untrustworthy critic of
hmited view — that Kavanagh was, even in 1849, ^^ ^^st sketch
in the direction of the American novel. But if the Concord sage,
with many another reader, was surprised to find himself " charmed
with elegance in an American book,** it was because " elegance **
was really present even in parts of Kavanagh^ as it was certainly
present in Outre-Mer and Hyperion, And elegance, after all, is
not a thing to be banished from belles-lettres.

Charles F. Richardson

248 AMERICAN PROSE

FOOTPRINTS OF ANGELS

It was Sunday morning ; and the church bells were all ringing
together. From the neighboring villages came the solemn, joyful
sounds, floating through the sunny air, mellow and faint and low,

— all mingling into one harmonious chime, like the sound of some
distant organ in heaven. Anon they ceased j and the woods, and
the clouds, and the whole village, and the very air itself seemed to
pray, — so silent was it everywhere.

Two venerable old men, — high- priests and patriarchs were
they in the land, — went up the pulpit stairs, as Moses and Aaron
went up Mount Hor, in the sight of all the congregation, — for
the pulpit stairs were in front, and very high.

Paul Flemming will never forget the sermon he heard that day,

— no, not even if he should live to be as old as he who preached
it. The text was, " I know that my Redeemer liveth." It was
meant to console the pious, poor widow, who sat right below him
at the foot of the pulpit stairs, all in black, and her heart breaking.
He said nothing of the terrors of death, nor of the gloom of the
narrow house, but, looking beyond these things, as mere circum-
stances to which the imagination mainly gives importance, he told
his hearers of the innocence of childhood upon earth, and the
holiness of childhood in heaven, and how the beautiful Lord Jesus
was once a little child, and now in heaven the spirits of little
children walked with him, and gathered flowers in the fields of
Paradise. Good old man ! In behalf of humanity, I thank thee
for these benignant words ! And still more than I, the bereaved
mother thanked thee, and from that hour, though she wept in
secret for her child, yet

" She knew he was with Jesus,
And she asked him not again."

After the sermon, Paul Flemming walked forth alone into the
churchyard. There was no one there, save a little boy, who was
fishing with a pin hook in a grave half full of water. But a few
moments afterward, through the arched gateway under the belfry,
came a funeral procession. At its head walked a priest in white

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 249

surplice, chanting. Peasants, old and young, followed him, with
burning tapers in their hands. A young girl carried in her arms a
dead child, wrapped in its little winding sheet. The grave was
close under the wall, by the church door. A vase of holy water
stood beside it. The sexton took the child from the girl's arms,
and put it into a coffin ; and, as he placed it in the grave, the
girl held over it a cross, wreathed with roses, and the priest and
peasants sang a funeral hymn. When this was over, the priest
sprinkled the grave and the crowd with holy water ; and then they
all went into the church, each one stopping as he passed the
grave to throw a handful of earth into it, and sprinkle it with holy
water.

A few moments afterwards, the voice of the priest was heard
saying mass in the church, and Flemming saw the toothless old
sexton, treading the fresh earth into the grave of the little child,
with his clouted shoes. He approached him, and asked the age
of the deceased. The sexton leaned a moment on his spade, and
shrugging his shoulders replied ;

" Only an hour or two. It was born in the night, and died this
morning early."

" A brief existence," said Flemming. " The child seems to have
been bom only to be buried, and have its name recorded on a
wooden tombstone." .

The sexton went on with his work, and made no reply. Flem-
ming still lingered among the graves, gazing with wonder at the
strange devices, by which man has rendered death horrible and the
grave loathsome.

In the temple of Juno at Elis, Sleep and his twin-brother Death
were represented as children reposing in the arms of Night. On
various funeral monuments of the ancients the Genius of Death is
sculptured as a beautiful youth, leaning on an inverted torch, in
the attitude of repose, his wings folded and his feet crossed. In
such peaceful and attractive forms, did the imagination of ancient
poets and sculptors represent death. And these were men in whose
souls the religion of Nature was like the light of stars, beautiful, but
faint and cold ! Strange, that in later days, this angel of God,
which leads us with a gentle hand, into the " land of the great
departed, into the silent land," should have been transformed into

2 so AMERICAN PROSE

a monstrous and terrific thing ! Such is the spectral rider on the
white horse ; — such the ghastly skeleton with scythe and hour-glass,
— the Reaper, whose name is Death !

One of the most popular themes of poetry and painting in the
Middle Ages, and continuing down even into modern times, was
the Dance of Death. In almost all languages is it written, — the
apparition of the grim spectre, putting a sudden stop to all busi-
ness, and leading men away into the " remarkable retirement " of
the grave. It is written in an ancient Spanish poem, and painted
on a wooden bridge in Switzerland. The designs of Holbein are
well known. The most striking among them is that, where, from
a group of children sitting round a cottage hearth. Death has taken
one by the hand, and is leading it out of the door. Quietly and
unresisting goes the little child, and in its countenance no grief,
but wonder only ; while the other children are weeping and stretch-
ing forth their hands in vain towards their departing brother. A
beautiful design it is, in all save the skeleton. An angel had been
better, with folded wings, and torch inverted !

And now the sun was growing high and warm. A little chapel,
whose door stood open, seemed to invite Flemming to enter and
enjoy the grateful coolness. He went in. There was no one there.
The walls were covered with paintings and sculpture of the rudest
kind, and with a few funeral tablets. There, was nothing there to
move the heart to devotion ; but in that hour the heart of Flem-
ming was weak, — weak as a child's. He bowed his stubborn knees,
and wept And oh ! how many disappointed hopes, how many bitter
recollections, how much of wounded pride and unrequited love,
were in those tears, through which he read on a marble tablet in
the chapel wall opposite, this singular inscription ;

" Look not mournfully into the Past. It comes not back again.
Wisely improve the Present. It is thine. Go forth to meet the
shadowy Future, without fear, and with a manly heart."

It seemed to him, as if the unknown tenant of that grave had
opened his lips of dust, and spoken to him the words of consola-
tion, which his soul needed, and which no friend had yet spoken.
In a moment the anguish of his thoughts was still. The stone was
rolled away from the door of his heart ; death was no longer there,
but an angel clothed in white. He stood up, and his eyes were no

HENRY IVADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 2$ I

more bleared \inth tears ; and, looking into the bright momlDg
heaven, he said ;

" I will be strong ! "

Men sometimes go down into tombs, with painful longings to
behold once more the faces of their departed friends ; and as
they gaze upon them, lying there so peacefully with the semblance,
that they wore on earth, the sweet breath of heaven touches them,
and the features crumble and fall together, and are but dust. So
did his soul then descend for the last time into the great tomb of
the Past, with painful longings to behold once more the dear faces
of those he had loved ; and the sweet breath of heaven touched
them, and they would not stay, but crumbled away and perished
as he gazed. They, too, were dust. And thus, far-sounding, he
heard the great gate of the Past shut behind him as the Divine
Poet did the gate of Paradise, when the angel pointed him the
way up the Holy Mountain ; and to him likewise was it forbidden
to look back.

In the life of every man, there are sudden transitions of feeling,
which seem almost miraculous. At once, as if some magician had
touched the heavens and the earth, the dark clouds melt into the
air, the wind falls, and serenity succeeds the storm. The causes
which produce these sudden changes may have been long at work
within us, but the changes themselves are instantaneous, and
apparently without sufficient cause. It was so with Flemming ;
and from that hour forth he resolved, that he would no longer
veer \iith every shifting wind of circumstance ; no longer be a
child's plaything in the hands of Fate, which we ourselves do
make or mar. He resolved henceforward not to lean on others ;
but to walk self-confident and self-possessed ; no longer to waste
his years in vain regrets, nor wait the fulfilment of boundless
hopes and indiscreet desires ; but to live in the Present wisely,
alike forgetful of the Past, and careless of what the mysterious
Future might bring. And from that moment he was calm and
strong ; he was reconciled with himself ! His thoughts turned to
his distant home beyond the sea. An indescribable, sweet feeling
rose within him.

"Thither will I turn my wandering footsteps," said he; "and
be a man among men, and no longer a dreamer among shadows.

252 AMERICAN PROSE

Henceforth be mine a life of action and reality ! I will work in
my own sphere, nor wish it other than it is. This alone is health
and happiness. This alone is life ;

' Life that shall send
A challenge to its end,
And when it comes, say. Welcome, friend ! '

Why have I not made these sage reflections, this wise resolve,
sooner ? Can such a simple result spring only from the long and
intricate process of experience ? Alas ! it is not till Time, with
reckless hand, has torn out half the leaves from the Book of
Human Life, to light the fires of passion with, from day to day,
that Man begins to see that the leaves which remain are few in
number, and to remember, faintly at first, and then more clearly,
that, upon the earlier pages of that book, was written a story of
happy innocence, which he would fain read over again. Then
come Hstless irresolution, and the inevitable inaction of despair ;
or else the firm resolve to record upon the leaves that still remain,
a more noble history, than the child's story, with which the book
began.'*

[From Hyperion^ a Romance^ 1839, chapter 8. The text is that of the
first edition.]

THE VALLEY OF THE LOIRE

Je ne con^ois qu*une mani^re de voyager plus agreable que d'aller k cheval;
c'est d'aller k pied. On part \ son moment, on s'arr&te \. sa volonte, on fait
tant et si peu d'exercise qu*on veut.

Quand on ne veut qu'arriver, on peut courir en chaise de poste; mais quand

on veut voyager, il faut aller k pied.

Rousseau

In the beautiful month of October, I made a foot excursion
along the banks of the Loire, from Orleans to Tours. This luxu-
riant region is justly called the garden of France. From Orleans
to Blois, the whole valley of the Loire is one continued vineyard.
The bright green foliage of the vine spreads, like the undulations
of the sea, over all the landscape, with here and there a silver
flash of the river, a sequestered hamlet, or the towers of an old
chateau, to enliven and variegate the scene.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 253

The vintage had already commenced. The peasantry were
busy in the fields, — the song that cheered their labor was on the
breeze, and the heavy wagon tottered by, laden with the clusters
of the vine. Everything around me wore that happy look which
makes the heart glad. In the morning I arose with the lark ; and
at night I slept where sunset overtook me. The healthy exercise
of foot-travelling, the pure, bracing air of autumn, and the cheer-
ful aspect of the whole landscape about me, gave fresh elasticity
to a mind not overburdened with care, and made me forget not
only the fatigue of walking, but also the consciousness of being
alone.

My first day's journey brought me at evening to a village, whose
name I have forgotten, situated about eight leagues from Orleans.
It is a small, obscure hamlet, not mentioned in the guide-book,
and stands upon the precipitous banks of a deep ravine, through
which a noisy brook leaps down to turn the ponderous wheel of a
thatch-roofed mill. The village inn stands upon the highway;
but the village itself is not visible to the traveller as he passes. It
is completely hidden in the lap of a wooded valley, and so em-
bowered in trees that not a roof nor a chimney peeps out to betray
its hiding-place. It is like the nest of a ground-swallow, which
the passing footstep almost treads upon, and yet it is not seen. I
passed by without suspecting that a village was near ; and the
little inn had a look so uninviting that I did not even enter it.

After proceeding a mile or two farther, I perceived, upon my
left, a village spire rising over the vineyards. Towards this I
directed my footsteps ; but it seemed to recede as I advanced,
and at last quite disappeared. It was evidently many miles dis-
tant ; and as the path I followed descended from the highway, it
had gradually sunk beneath a swell of the vine-clad landscape. I
now found myself in the midst of an extensive vineyard. It was
just sunset ; and the last golden rays lingered on the rich and mel-
low scenery around me. The peasantry were still busy at their
task ; and the occasional bark of a dog, and the distant sound of
an evening bell, gave fresh romance to the scene. The reality of
many a day-dream of childhood, of many a poetic revery of youth,
was before me. I stood at sunset amid the luxuriant vineyards of
France !

254 AMERICAN PROSE

The first person I met was a poor old woman, a little bowed
down with age, gathering grapes into a large basket. She was
dressed like the poorest class of peasantry, and pursued her soli-
tary task alone, heedless of the cheerful gossip and the merry laugh
which came from a band of more youthful vintagers at a short dis-
tance from her. She was so intently engaged in her work, that
she did not perceive my approach until I bade her good evening.
On hearing my voice, she looked up from her labor, and returned
the salutation ; and, on my asking her if there were a tavern or a
farm-house in the neighborhood where I could pass the night, she
showed me the pathway through the vineyard that led to the vil-
lage, and then added, with a look of curiosity, —

" You must be a stranger. Sir, in these parts."

" Yes ; my home is very far from here."

"How far?"

" More than a thousand leagues."

The old woman looked incredulous.

" I came from a distant land beyond the sea."

" More than a thousand leagues ! " at length repeated she ; " and
why have you come so far from home ? "

" To travel ; — to see how you live in this country."

" Have you no relations in your own?"

" Yes ; I have both brothers and sisters, a father and ^ '*

" And a mother ? "

" Thank Heaven, I have."

"And did you leave her? "

Here the old woman gave me a piercing look of reproof;
shook her head mournfully, and, with a deep sigh, as if some painful
recollections had been awakened in her bosom, turned again to her
solitary task. I felt rebuked ; for there is something almost pro-
phetic in the admonitions of the old. The eye of age looks
meekly into my heart ! the voice of age echoes mournfully through
it ! the hoary head and palsied hand of age plead irresistibly for its
sympathies ! I venerate old age ; and I love not the man who
can look without emotion upon the sunset of life, when the dusk
of evening begins to gather over the watery eye, and the shadows
of twilight grow broader and deeper upon the understanding 1

I pursued the pathway which led towards the village, and the

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 2$$

next person I encountered was an old man, stretched lazily be-
neath the vines upon a little strip of turf, at a point where four
paths met, forming a crossway in the vineyard. He was clad in a
coarse garb of gray, with a pair of long gaiters or spatterdashes.
Beside him lay a blue cloth cap, a staff, and an old weather-beaten
knapsack. I saw at once that he was a foot-traveller like myself,
and therefore, without more ado, entered into conversation with
him. From his language, and the peculiar manner in which he
now and then wiped his upper lip with the back of his hand, as if
in search of the mustache which was no longer there, I judged
that he had been a soldier. In this opinion I was not mistaken.
He had served under Napoleon, and had followed the imperial
eagle across the Alps, and the Pyrenees, and the burning sands of
Egypt. Like every viei7/e moustache^ he spake with enthusiasm
of the Little Corporal, and cursed the English, the Germans, the
Spanish, and every other race on earth, except the Great Nation,
— his own.

" I like," said he, " after a long day's march, to lie down in this
way upon the grass, and enjoy the cool of the evening. It reminds
me of the bivouacs of other days, and of old friends who are now
up there."

Here he pointed with his finger to the sky.

" They have reached the last etape before me, in the long march.
But I shall go soon. We shall all meet again at the last roll-call.
Sacre nom de ! There's a tear 1 "

He wiped it away with his sleeve.

Here our colloquy was interrupted by the approach of a group
of vintagers, who were returning homeward from their labor. To
this party I joined myself, and invited the old soldier to do the
same ; but he shook his head.

" I thank you ; my pathway lies in a different direction."

" But there is no other village near, and the sun has already set."

"No matter, I am used to sleeping on the ground. Good
night."

I left the old man to his meditations, and walked on in company
with the vintagers. Following a well-trodden pathway through
the vineyards, we soon descended the valley's slope, and I suddenly
found myself in the bosom of one of those little hamlets from

2 $6 AMERICAN PROSE

which the laborer rises to his toil as the skylark to his song. My
companions wished me a good night, as each entered his own
thatch- roofed cottage, and a little girl led me out to the very inn
which an hour or two before I had disdained to enter.

When I awoke in the morning, a brilliant autumnal sun was
shining in at my window. The merry song of birds mingled
sweetly with the sound of rustling leaves and the gurgle of the
brook. The vintagers were going forth to their toil ; the wine-
press was busy in the shade, and the clatter of the mill kept time
to the miller's song. I loitered about the village with a feeling of
calm delight. I was unwilling to leave the seclusion of this se-
questered hamlet ; but at length, with reluctant step, I took the
cross-road through the vineyard, and in a moment the little village
had sunk again, as if by enchantment, into the bosom of the earth.

[From Outre-Mer, a Ptlgrimage beyond the Sea^ 1 833-1834, "The Valley
of the Loire." This text is that of the edition of 1846.]

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

[Abraham Lincoln, sixteenth President of the United States, was born neat
Hodgensville, Ky., Feb. 12, 1809. His education was a desultory one, as
he was almost wholly self-taught. He was admitted to the Illinois bar in
1837, having already shown a marked interest in public affairs. He served in
the State Legislature (1834-42), in the national Congress (1846-48), and was
elected President of the United States in i860. Reelected in 1864, he was
assassinated by John Wilkes Booth soon after the beginning of his second term
of ofHce, and died April 15, 1865. The standard edition of his papers and
speeches is that of J. G. Nicolay. The best biography is that of Hay and
Nicolay.]

•

Lincoln's style, both in the sphere of oratory and in the sphere
of dialectic, exhibits two distinct and very striking characteristics.
The first is a remarkable compactness, clarity, and precision of
statement, which may be taken as a nearly faultless model of con-
vincing exposition. These qualities, moreover, derive their ulti-
mate effectiveness from the supreme perfection \\ith which they
show the intellectual processes that gave them birth. The domi-
nant thought is stripped of every superfluous detail and made to
stand out vividly before the mind in a clear white brilliancy of phras-
ing ; a nervous energy that is muscular and full of force brings
every word to bear upon the writer's purpose ; while a delicate
balancing of contrasted thought is conveyed in an equally delicate
balancing of phrase, that pleases and attracts the mind, no less
than the ear, of him who hears it. A tendency toward veiled an-
tithesis, indeed, may be set down as a definite feature of Lincoln's
oratory. It enters into nearly all of his most finished utterances ;
and it is the more effective in that it does not spring from con-
scious artifice, but is entirely natural ; for it arose from the
supremely logical workings of an intellect that had been trained to
see the other side of every question, to set one fact against another,
to weigh and to compare, and then to render judgment with a
perfect impartiality. This it was that gave to Lincoln's controver-
s 257

2S8 AMERICAN PROSE

sial oratory its great persuasive power ; for it struck the note ol
absolute sincerity and of intense conviction, — the note that
was lacking in the oratory of his most redoubtable opponent,
Douglas, as it was lacking also in the eloquence of the greatest of
the Roman orators.

This trait in Lincoln's style was fostered, if it was not actually
created, by his legal training, and by the necessity imposed upon
him of addressing bodies of men who lacked the academic point
of view, who were not versed in technicaHties, but whose mother
wit and native shrewdness made them keen to detect a flaw in the
most brilliant argument and to supply by close and cogent reason-
ing the lack of formal training. Lincoln's style, then, was no holi-
day weapon, but one that had been slowly forged by him in the
fire of experience, one that had been tempered to a perfect edge,
one that had again and again been tested in the severest of foren-
sic conflicts.

The second characteristic is still more remarkable. It finds its em-
bodiment in the perfect taste and exquisite finish that endow some
of his periods with such unusual beauty of expression. In several
of the famous passages that are quoted here — the First and
Second Inaugurals and the Gettysburg Address — the most accom-
plished rhetorician will find it difficult to detect a flaw. And they
contain much more than rhetoric. The sentences are short and
simple ; the thought is not elaborated ; yet the simplicity is the
simplicity of strength, and the ease is the ease of conscious power,
while throughout the words whose cadences run on in an unbroken
harmony there is a certain loftiness of diction that not infrequently
attains to the sublime, especially when a coloring of metaphor is
introduced that half recalls the severe yet splendid imagery of the
Hebrew prophets. Just how this taste, this instinctive perception
of every cadence, and this touch of the sublime, became a part of
Lincoln's intellectual endowment is a mystery that stylists have in
vain endeavored to make clear. Perhaps the ultimate solution
must be sought in that psychological truth which contains the expla-
nation of the source of every great style. For a style is only great
when it is a true reflection of mentality, of temperament, of the
man himself of whom it is a part ; and thus it is that we may find
in the prose of this untaught American the accurate embodiment

ABRAHAM LINCOLN 259

of his own character as moulded by experience and by environment.
It had clearness because his tliought was logical ; it had sincerity
because he was himself sincere ; it had solemnity and stateliness
because of his own fundamental seriousness, whose depths were in
reality revealed and not obscured by the humor that so often
played upon the surface of his thought ; and it had harmony be-
cause in him the qualities of strength and gentleness were fitly and
indissolubly harmonized.

Harry Thurston Peck

26o AMERICAN PROSE

FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS

This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who in*
habit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing govern-
ment, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it,
or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it. I can-
not be ignorant of the fact that many worthy and patriotic citizens
are desirous of having the National Constitution amended. While
I make no recommendation of amendments, I fully recognize the
rightful authority of the people over the whole subject, to be exer-
cised in either of the modes prescribed in the instrument itself;
and I should, under existing circumstances, favor rather than
oppose a fair opportunity being afforded the people to act upon
it. I will venture to add that to me the convention mode seems
preferable, in that it allows amendments to originate with the peo-
ple themselves, instead of only permitting them to take or reject
propositions originated by others not especially chosen for the
purpose, and which might not be precisely such as they would
wish to either accept or refuse. I understand a proposed amend-
ment to the Constitution — which amendment, however, I have not
seen — has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Govern-
ment shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States,
including that of persons held to service. To avoid misconstruc-
tion of what I have said, I depart from my purpose not to speak
of particular amendments so far as to say that, holding such a pro-
vision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to
its being made express and irrevocable.

The chief magistrate derives all his authority from the people,
and they have conferred none upon him to fix terms for the sep-
aration of the States. The people themselves can do th:s also
if they choose ; but the executive, as such, has nothing to do
with it. His duty is to administer the present government, as it
came to his hands, and to transmit it, unimpaired by him, to his
successor.

Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate
justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the
world? In our present differences is either party without faith of

ABRAHAM LINCOLN 26 1

being in the right ? If the Almighty Ruler of Nations, with his
eternal truth and justice, be on your side of the North, or on yours
of the South, that truth and that justice will surely prevail by the
judgment of this great tribunal of the American people.

By the frame of the government under which we live, this same
people have wisely given their pubUc servants but little power for
mischief; and have, with equal wisdom, provided for the return
of that little to their own hands at very short intervals. While the
people retain their virtue and vigilance, no administration, by any
extreme of wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure the gov-
ernment in the short space of four years.

My countrymen, one and all, think calmly and well upon this
whole subject. Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time. If
there be an object to hurry any of you in hot haste to a step
which you would never take deliberately, that object will be frus-
trated by taking time ; but no good object can be frustrated by
it. Such of you as are now dissatisfied, still have the old Consti-
tution unimpaired, and, on the sensitive point, the laws of your
own framing under it ; while the new administration will have
no immediate power, if it would, to change either. If it were
admitted that you who are dissatisfied hold the right side in the
dispute, there still is no single good reason for precipitate action.
Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him
who has never yet forsaken this favored land, are still competent
to adjust in the best way our present difficulty.

In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in
mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will
not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves
the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to de-
stroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to
" preserve, protect, and defend it."

I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We
must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it
must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of
memory, stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave to
every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet
swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they
will be, by the better angels of our nature.

262 AMERICAN PROSE

[From the First Inaugural Address^ March 4, 1 86 1. Reprinted, by per
mission of the publishers, The Century Company, from the text used by NicoUy
and Hay, Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln^ vol. ii, pp. 6-7.]

LETTER TO GENERAL McCLELLAN

Executive Mansion, Washington, D.C,

October 13, 1862.
Major-General McClellan :

My Dear Sir : You remember my speaking to you of what I
called your over-cautiousness. Are you not over-cautious when
you assume that you cannot do what the enemy is constantly doing?
Should you not claim to be at least his equal in prowess, and act
upon the claim ? As I understand, you telegraphed General Hal-
leck that you cannot subsist your army at Winchester unless the rail-
road from Harper's Ferry to that point be put in working order.
But the enemy does now subsist his army at Winchester, at a dis-
tance nearly twice as great from railroad transportation as you
would have to do without the railroad last named. He now
wagons from Culpeper Court House, which is just about twice as
far as you would have to do from Harper's Ferry. He is certainly
not more than half as well provided with wagons as you are. I
certainly should be pleased for you to have the advantage of the
railroad from Harper's Ferry to Winchester, but it wastes all the
remainder of autumn to give it to you, and in fact ignores the ques-
tion of time, which cannot and must not be ignored. Again, one
of the standard maxims of war, as you know, is to " operate upon
the enemy's communications as much as possible without expos-
ing your own." You seem to act as if this applies against you,
but cannot apply in your favor. Change positions with the enemy,
and think you not he would break your communication with
Richmond within the next twenty-four hours? You dread his
going into Pennsylvania ; but if he does so in full force, he gives
up his communications to you absolutely, and you have nothing
to do but to follow and ruin him. If he does so with less than
full force, fall upon and beat what is left behind all the easier.
Exclusive of the water-line, you are now nearer Richmond than
the enemy is by the route that you can and he must take. Why

ABRAHAM LINCOLN 263

can you not reach there before him, unless you admit that he is
more than your equal on a march? His route is the arc of a
circle, while yours is the chord. The roads are as good on yours
as on his. You know I desired, but did not order, you to cross
the Potomac below, instead of above, the Shenandoah and Blue
Ridge. My idea was that this would at once menace the enemy's
communications, which I would seize if he would permit.

If he should move northward, I would follow him closely, hold-
ing his communications. If he should prevent our seizing his
communications and move toward Richmond, I would press
closely to him, fight him if a favorable opportunity should present,
and at least try to beat him to Richmond on the inside track.
I say, " try " ; if we never try, we shall never succeed. If he
makes a stand at . Winchester, moving neither north nor south, I
would fight him there, on the idea that if we cannot beat him
when he bears the wastage of coming to us, we never can when
we bear the wastage of going to him. This proposition is a simple
truth, and is too important to be lost sight of for a moment. In
coming to us he tenders us an advantage which we should not
waive. We should not so operate as merely to drive him away.
As we must beat him somewhere or fail finally, we can do it, if at
all, easier near to us than far away. If we cannot beat the enemy
where he now is, we never can, he again being within the in-
trenchments of Richmond.

Recurring to the idea of going to Richmond on the inside
track, the facility of supplying from the side away from the enemy
is remarkable, as it were, by the different spokes of a wheel ex-
tending from the hub toward the rim, and this whether you move
directly by the chord or on the inside arc, hugging the Blue
Ridge more closely. The chord-line, as you see, carries you to
Aldie, Hay Market, and Fredericksburg; and you see how turn-
pikes, railroads, and finally the Potomac, by Aquia Creek, meet
you at all points from Washington ; the same, only the lines
lengthened a little, if you press closer to the Blue Ridge part of
the way.

The gaps through the Blue Ridge I understand to be about the
following distances from Harper's Ferry, to wit : Vestal's, 5 miles ;
Gregory's, 13; Snicker's, 18; Ashby's, 28; Manassas, 38;

264 AMERICAN PROSE

Chester, 45 ; and Thornton*s, 53. I should think it preferable
to take the route nearest the enemy, disabling him to make an
important move without your knowledge, and compelling him
to keep his forces together for dread of you. The gaps would
enable you to attack if you should wish. For a great part of the
way you would be practically between the enemy and both
Washington and Richmond, enabling us to spare you the greatest
number of troops from here. When at length running for Rich-
mond ahead of him enables him to move this way, if he does so,
turn and attack him in the rear. But I think he should be en-
gaged long before such point is reached. It is all easy if our
troops march as well as the enemy, and it is unmanly to say they
cannot do it. This letter is in no sense an order.

Yours truly,

A.- LlNCX>LN

[Reprinted, by permission of The Century Company, from Complete IVorks
of Lincoln, vol. ii, pp. 245-247.]

ADDRESS AT GETTYSBURG

•
Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this

continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the

proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that
nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long
endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have
come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for
those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is
altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate — we cannot conse-
crate — we cannot hallow — this ground. The brave men, living
and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our
poor power to add or to detract. The world will little note nor
long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they
did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to
the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so

ABRAHAM LINCOLN 265

nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the
great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we
take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last
full measure of devotion ; that we here highly resolve that these
dead shall not have died in vain ; that this nation, under God,
shall have a new birth of freedom ; and that government of the
people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the
earth.

{^Address at the Dedication of the Gettysburg National Cemetery ^ Nov. 19,
1863. Reprinted, by permission of The Century Company, from Complete
Works of Lincoln t vol. ii, p. 439.]

• SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS

Fellow-countrymen : — At this second appearing to take the
oath of the presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended
address than there was at the first. Then a statement, somewhat
in detail, of a course to be pursued, seemed fitting and proper.
Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public decla-
rations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase
of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses
the energies of the nation, little that is new can be presented.
The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is
as well known to the public as to myself; and it is, I trust, rea-
sonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for
the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all
thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All
dreaded it — all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address
was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the
Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to
destroy it without war — seeking to dissolve the Union, and divide
effects, by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war ; but one of
them would make war rather than let the nation survive ; and the
other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war
came.

266 AMERICAN PROSE

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not dis-
tributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern
part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful
interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of
the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was
the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even
by war ; while the government claimed no right to do more than
to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.

Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the dura-
tion which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the
cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict
itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a
result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same
Bible, and pray to the same God ; and each invokes his aid against
the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask
a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of
other men's faces ; but let us judge not, that we be not judged.
The prayers of both could not be answered — that of neither has
been answered fully.

The Almighty has his own purposes. "Woe unto the world
because of oflenses ! for it must needs be that offenses come ; but
woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall sup-
pose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the
providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued
through his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that he
gives to both North and South this terrible war, as the woe due to
those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any
departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a
living God always ascribe to him ? Fondly do we hope — fervently
do we pray — that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass
away. Yet, if God wills that it shall continue until all the wealth
piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited
toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the
lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said
three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, " The judgments
of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

With malice toward none ; with charity for all ; with firmness
in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to

ABRAHAM LINCOLN 267

finish the work we are in ; to bind up the nation's wounds ; to
care for him who shall have borne the batde, and for his widow,
and his orphan — to do all which may achieve and cherish a just
and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.

[Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865. Reprinted, by permission oi
The Century Company, from Complete Works of Lincoln, vol. ii, pp. 656-657.]

EDGAR ALLAN POE

[Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, Jan. 19, 1809, and died in Baltimore.
Oct. 7, 1849. ^c ^^s ^^^ grandson of David Poe, a distinguished Maryland
officer in the Revolution. His father and mother were both actors. Poe was
early left an orphan, and was adopted by John Allan, a wealthy Scotch tobacco
merchant in Richmond. He was educated in private schools in Richmond
and in England, and entered the University of Virginia in 1826, but was with-
drawn in the same year by his adopted father, who placed him in his counting-
room. On account of differences with his family, he left them in 1827, entered
the army under an assumed name, and served for two years in a battery of
artillery. He was then partially reconciled with Mr. Allan, and received an
annuity until Mr. Allan's death in 1834. In 1830 he entered the Military
Academy at West Point, but was dismissed in the following year by court-
martial on charges of remissness in duty and disobedience. From that time until
his death he led the uncertain and irregular life of a Struggling writer, editor, and
literary hack, in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York. His brilliant intellect
was in most cases appreciated by his numerous employers and colleagues. But
his irritable and morbidly sensitive nature, his occasional indulgence in drink,
which produced in him the effect of temporary insanity, and m opium, interfered
greatly with his success. His health was for years much impaired, and he
was during short periods, particularly after his wife's death, scarcely responsible
for his acts. In person, Poe was strong and handsome. Women were especially
attracted by him, and probably understood the inequalities of his genius better
than did his male contemporaries. His wife, who was less than fourteen at her
marriage in 1836, he cared for tenderly until her death in 1847. Poe's character
has had its bitter detractors, its apologists, and its warm admirers. Some have
thought him an unfortunate and persecuted man; some, a dishonorable creature
of genius ; and there have not been wanting those who attribute his almost
inexplicable vagaries and lapses from rational living to disease of the brain.
The facts of his life have been patiently collected by G. E. Woodberry in his
Life (Boston, 1885), and in the "Memoir" introducing the edition, by
E. C. Stedman and G. E. Woodberry, of his complete works.

Poe's stories and criticisms were generally first published in periodicals.
The collections published during his lifetime were Narrative of Arthur
Gordon Pym (1838), Tale$ of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1840), Tales
(1845), and The Literati (1850). Eureka: A Prose Poem was published in
1848. Poe's complete works have been collected and edited, with especial
attention to the text, by E. C. Stedman and G. E. Woodberry. From the text
of this edition, with the permission of the publishers, Herbert S. Stone and Co,
the extracts in this volume are reprinted.]

268

EDGAR ALLAN POE 269

One of Poe's Tales of the Grotesque portrays the fantastic
doings of the so-called Angel of the Odd. The name is not
inapt for Poe himself. In all his writings, with the possible
exception of his criticism, there is present the note of abnormal-
ity ; and even in his criticism, the wilfulness and the egotism
often reach a pitch that suggests morbidness of nature. Poe was
a decadent before the days of decadence, and it is through no
mistaken instinct that French decadents from Baudelaire to
Mallarm^ have delighted to do him honor.

Poe was fond of mystifications, and his confessions, as regards
methods of work, are not to be taken too literally. Nevertheless,
the rules he lays down in his essay on Hawthorne, for the writer
of fiction, more particularly of the tale, are unquestionably frank
in ejcpression and true to Poe's own instincts and habits. These
rules make very clear the artificiality of art as Poe conceived of
it, its remoteness in substance from normal experience ; they also
illustrate the perfection of Poe*s mastery of technique within the
limits which his conception of art imposed upon him. According
to Poe's theory, the tale ought to be an exquisite tissue of moods
and images wrought skilfully together through the medium of prose
for the production of a single effect. The first task of the literary
artist is to determine what the single effect is to be, at which his
tale is to aim among the almost countless effects of terror, pas-
sion, horror, grotesqueness, or humor, that are open to his choice.
Having determined on his effect, the artist is to keep it vividly
before his imagination, and to let it control him in all his selection
of details ; he is to construct his entire story so that every fact,
every incident, every character, even every phrase, figure, and
cadence, shall prepare for or intensify this single effect, and bring
out its peculiar quality. The effect is an end in itself, and is its
own justification. The story need have no symbolic implications,
— need send no suggestions of remote moral truths darting over
the nerves to the brain. According to Poe's own practice, the
effects best worth aiming at are emotional shivers of some sort,
such as come from a sudden keen sense of the strangeness, or
grotesqueness, or mystery, or horror of life. Each of Poe's best
tales turns out on analysis to be simply an exquisitely adjusted
series of devices for playing adroitly upon responsive nerves, and

270 AMERICAN PROSE

putting a sensitive temperament into a harmoniously vibrating
mood.

The material that Poe's nature offers him most generously for
fabrication into art is as artificial as the methods by which he
likes to work. Poe had a degenerate's excitable nerves, ardent
senses, and irresponsible feeUngs. Moreover, he had an alto-
gether modern delight in watching intently for their own sakes
the tricks of his nerves and senses, and the shadow-play of his
moods. He was an amateur of sensations and impressions, prone
to dwelling upon them half mystically, and bent on capturing the
essential charm of each. He was extraordinarily sensitive to all
the fleeting " unconsidered trifles " of the life of the senses and the
feelings. In one of his stories he boasts of the delight of behold-
ing " floating in mid-air the sad visions that the many may not
view " ; of pondering " over the perfume of some novel flower " ;
of " growing bewildered with the meaning of some musical
cadence." This same morbidness and semi-hysterical sensitive-
ness may be traced also in Poe's heroes ; they, too, are tortured
by the intensity of their sensations ; they are persecuted by fixed
ideas ; they isolate themselves from the world, brood over their
abnormal experiences of feeling and imagination, and live in
, dream-regions of their own fantastic invention. Poe's favorite
characters, — Usher, the lovers of Ligeia, of Eleanora, and of
Morella, — are degenerates, pure and simple, victims of nervous
disease, experimenters with narcotics, and dabblers in death.
Through all these characteristics, they call to mind the heroes of
modern decadent French fiction, Huysmans* des Esseintes, for
example. Like modern decadent heroes, too, Poe's heroes feel
the fascination of the morally perverse, and spice the aesthetic
banquet with deadly sins, — sins whose piquancy lies in their
abnormality of thought and feeling, not in any gross criminality of
act. Moreover, Poe himself despises the conventional and the
commonplace both in character and in life; he is cynical and
disenchanted, and boasts of his cynicism and disenchant-
ment. " I really perceive that vanity," he asserts in one of
his letters, "about which most men merely prate, — the vanity
of the human or temporal life. I live continually in a reverie
of the future, I liave no faith in human perfectibility, — I think

EDGAR ALLAN POE 27 1

that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon hu-
manity."

In Poe's so-called Tales of Ratiocination the material is differ-
ent from what has thus far been described ; it is, however, no
less artificial, and the methods by which it is made effective are
much the same. In short, Poe is confessedly a necromancer
whose sole ambition is to play delicately upon nerves and intel-
lects that have been skilfully attuned to submit to his influence.
He is a weaver of spells and a dreamer of dreams, who has no
concern with actual life, or with the commonplace moods or
motives that enter into every-day experience. In all his tales no
character is portrayed with any patience that the reader can fancy
himself encountering in the highways of life, or that he would not
hesitate to take frankly by the hand. Poe's men are either mag-
niloquent poseurs who dine on their hearts in public, or else
disembodied intellects who do nothing but guess enormously com-
plicated riddles.

Nature, too, as Poe portrays it, becomes fantastic and unverifi-
able, a region of pure phantasmagoria. Its omnipresent " mead-
ows " are sprinkled with asphodels and acanthuses ; it is watered
with rivers of silence that lapse away into blue da Vinci distances ;
it is lighted with triple-tinted suns, and is at last shut in with the
golden walls of the universe. When Poe abandons this sort of
phantasmagoric nature it is only to take refuge in a nature
that has the artificiality of the play-house and of stage-land, a
mechanical nature that is cleverly put together with all manner of
practical trap-doors and ingenious stage-settings for the conven-
ience of Poe, the marvel- worker and conjurer, the inventer of com-
plicated wonders, and the unraveller of prettily fabricated mysteries.
It is into an artificial world of this sort that Poe*s purely intel-
lectual stories conduct, an exquisitely mechanical toy-world, well-
geared, nicely varnished, and running as smoothly as the universe
on the eighth day of creation.

The sharp division between these two worlds of nature in which
Poe keeps his readers — both worlds unreal, one intellectually
manufactured, the other fantastically dreamed out — suggests a
noteworthy characteristic of all Poe*s writings, — their trick of
seeming the work never of a whole man, always of a fragmen-

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tary man. Poe the author seems either a man of sheer intellect
or a man of sheer passion, — never a man of varied and rich
spiritual experience, in whom the life of the intellect and the life
of the feelings and the imagination have been thoroughly fused.
Here, again, there is a suggestion of that exotic quality that has
already been noted in Poe, and once more there is traceable a
certain kinship between Poe and French men of letters. It was
one of Coleridge's complaints, as regards the French genius, that
French writers, as compared with those of Teutonic stock, are lack-
ing in Gemiithj — in those spiritual qualities that come from the
complete fusion of intellect with deep feeling. The same criticism
may be made upon Poe. In nothing that he has produced is
there found a genuinely satisfying portrayal of life in terms of both
heart and mind. Passion, Poe*s writings contained in plenty,
albeit of a somewhat play-acting sort ; delicately elaborated
thought they possess in abundance. But never do Poe's heart and
intellect unite under the guidance of his imagination in a portrayal
of life that satisfies through its loyalty to the whole range of human
interests, and through its swiftly penetrating insight into human
experience of the most complex and richly vital sort. Poe is
always either emotionally shallow or intellectually superficial.

It may be urged that Poe's Tales of Passion and of Mystery are
subtle, — intellectually subtle, — and that in framing such incidents
and characters as those in The Fall of the House of • Usher Poe's
intellect and heart work together for the interpretation of life. In
point of fact, however, tales of this sort are subtle only in the
cleverness of their construction, intellectual only in the ingenuity
of their technique. Subtle in construction these emotional tales
doubtless are, — full of exquisite manipulation and nicely calculated
handiwork ; but subtle or intellectual in their interpretation of
life or character they never are. The phantom-folk that they deal
with are simplified to the point of being monomaniacs, — victims
of one idea or of one passion. The life portrayed is a superficial
life, obviously spectacular, with no complexity of intellectual
motive or of human interest. Poe*s subtlety is a subtlety of tech-
nique and execution, — the subtlety of the deft handicraftsman
who is skilled in his treatment of mechanical problems, not the
subtlety of the really great human artist who grasps life in all its

EDGAR ALLAN POE 2/3

implications alike for thought and for feeling, and reveals its intri-
cacies with imaginative penetration.

Art was for Poe one long series of technical problems more or
less consciously confronted, and in this prevailing interest in
technical problems his resemblance to modern decadents is once
more evident. All the motives and methods that have thus far
been noted as characteristic of Poe imply that art is for the most
part a matter of technical dexterity, and depends for its success
on shrewd calculation of effects, on the wise use of confessedly
artificial material, and on masterly execution. With life itself the
artist is only incidentally concerned ; he looks to it merely as to a
storehouse whence he may draw the crude material that is to be
worked up into art ; depth of interpretation and genuineness of
human appeal are only subordinate excellences. Art exists for its
own sake and is its own justification. A poem, Poe asserts, in
The Poetic Principle y should be "written solely for the poem's
sake." In this phrase, he substantially anticipates the famous
formula of art for art's sake which modern aestheticism has
ado})ted as its distinctive legend.

And indeed it is precisely because of his mastery of technique
that Poe has lived and is sure to live in Hterature. The genre he
most cultivated is slight ; his " criticism of life " is insignificant,
almost meaningless. The " beauty " that connects itself with his
work is felt to be an adventitious beauty imported into Hfe through
a morbid temperament, rather than essential beauty actually resi-
dent in life, and revealed through the swift play of poetic imagina-
tion. Yet beauty Poe's best tales certainly create with an almost
inevitable artistic instinct for the possibilities and requirements of
artificial production. His really memorable short stories have
perfect unity of effect, are deUcately elaborated with vibrant
detail, make often marvellously subtle play upon swiftly responsive
nerves, which have been put into tremulous readiness by cunning
hints and premonitions, and employ in their wording and in their
cadences a sound-symbolism that is conjuring in its creation of
atmosphere and reenforcement of effect. A great part of the power
of his most weird romances comes from the visionary concrete-
ness of his style, from his complete visualization of the fantastic
incidents he invents, — or rather from his complete realization of

274 AMERICAN PROSE

them for all the senses. Such tales as Eleanora and the Assign
nation have almost the brilliant sensuous surface of the best
romantic poetry, deal almost as continuously in glowing detail for
eye and ear. Poe's world gains its mystery and occasional ghast-
liness, not like Hawthorne's, through vagueness and the tantalizing
duplicity of symbolism, but through a direct representation of the
sights and sounds that go with crisped nerves and morbid mental
states, through the intense realization of the visionary experiences
of disordered imaginations, through vivid portrayal of disease and
death. Poe's world is a burnished world of exquisite falseness
which bribes us to accept it by its congruity of detail, its self-con-
sistency, and its visionary intensity and splendor of realization.
It seems real because it is so magnificently false. The harmony
is everywhere perfectly preserved, in the preparation of effects, in
the choice of details, in tone and in atmosphere.

Poe's style is delicately artificial, to suit his subject-matter and
his methods. He is fond of calculated involutions and inversions
and of nicely modulated rhythms. He had evidently read De
Quincey with intense appreciation, and there are repeatedly in
Poe's most highly finished prose echoes of De Quincey's cadences
and groupings of accent. In such visionary tales as Eleanora the
style has the sustained music and the elaborate melodies of an
incantation, and does much by its subtly modulated rise and fall,
its apt accelerations and delays, and its sympathetically shifting
tone-color, to subdue and control the reader's imagination, and to
impose upon him with surreptitious persuasiveness the images, the
moods, and the fantastic dreaming that Poe would have him help-
lessly accept. In his critical writings, on the other hand, Poe's
style is keen, analytical, acrid, harshly accentuated. Here again
is illustrated the curious division in Poe between emotions and
imagination on the one hand, and intellect on the other. Poe's
favorite critic is Macaulay. " The style and general conduct of
Macaulay's critical papers," Poe assures us, " could scarcely be
improved." Accordingly, in his own critical essays, there is much
of the over-anxious emphasis, the challenging manner, the demon-
strative tone that make Macaulay's literary essays so lacking in
subtlety, delicacy, and charm. There is much, too, of Macaulay's
hardness of finish, unsensitiveness to the shade, and confv'ient

EDGAR ALLAN POE 275

maladroitness. On the other hand, Poe cannot at all rival
Macaulay in wide reading, varied knowledge, command of lite-
rary gossip and apt anecdote, or in dignity of experience and
breadth of culture. Accordingly, Poe as a critic escapes being a
miniature, " shallow-hearted " Macaulay only through his genius
for analysis and his insight into technical problems. He has a far
surer intuition than Macaulay in whatever concerns the mechanics
of art. In his essays on special poets or poems, he explains many
obscure passages with genuine niceness of instinct, and comments
often with great delicacy of perception upon beauties of technique
and of structure. In his essays on the theory of art, he adopts in
some degree the romantic doctrine of art as a revealer of what he
calls *^ supernal loveliness," and writes with a plausible imitation of
academic sincerit)^ a plea for the Poetic Principle, as though its
presence in the human soul were a proof of immortality. Poetry,
he implies, is the ultimate form of speech. Yet, despite the
amiable volubility with which Poe recommends this doctrine, the
essay does not succeed in getting itself believed ; it is largely
vitiated by the tone of the professional lecturer, who seems to be
saying what he knows will please or impress, rather than uttering
his own frank thought.

And, indeed, shallowness of conviction is the radical defect in
all Poe's work both as theorizer and artist- He has play-feelings,
which he uses with the utmost ingenuity in his Tales of Passion
and Romance, and which he describes with the happiest facility.
He has unsurpassable intellectual acuteness, and invents very pretty
and puzzling complications of incident, in unravelling which mani-
kins use their play-wits with astonishing dexterity. He weaves,
too, through the help of this same inventive intellect, plausible and
suggestive theories about life and art. Yet these many " inven-
tions,'* artistic and theoretic alike, seem to us all the time merely
exquisite make-believe. Poe lacked deep convictions of any kind,
profound human experience, genuineness, and wealth of nature.
His art is correspondingly superficial and artificial. Nevertheless,
his work is sure to live because of its perfection of form. He is
a masterly technician, — the first of the Decadents, — the fore-
runner of the practicers of art for art's sake.

Lewis Edwards Gates

2/6 AMERICAN PROSE

SHADOW — A PARABLE

Yea ! though I walk through the valley of the Shadow.

Psalm of David,

Ye who read are still among the living; but I who write shall
have long since gone my way into the region of shadows. For
indeed strange things shall happen, and secret things be known,
and many centuries shall pass away, ere these memorials be seen
of men. And, when seen, there will be some to disbelieve and
some to doubt, and yet a few who will find much to ponder upon
in the characters here graven with a stylus of iron.

The year had been a year of terror, and of feelings more intense
than terror for which there is no name upon the earth. For many
prodigies and signs had taken place, and far and wide, over sea
and land, the black wings of the Pestilence were spread abroad.
To those, nevertheless, cunning in the stars, it was not unknown
that the heavens wore an aspect of ill; and to me, the Greek
Oinos, among others, it was evident that now had arrived the
alternation of that seven hundred and ninety-fourth year when,
at the entrance of Aries, the planet Jupiter is conjoined with the
red ring of the terrible Saturnus. The peculiar spirit of the
skies, if I mistake not greatly, made itself manifest, not only in
the physical orb of the earth, but in the souls, imaginations, and
meditations of mankind.

Over some flasks of the red Chian wine, within the walls of a
noble hall in a dim city called Ptolemais, we sat at night, a com-
pany of seven. And to our chamber there was no entrance save
by a lofty door of brass; and the door was fashioned by the
artisan Corinnos, and, being of rare workmanship, was fastened
from within. Black draperies likewise, in the gloomy room,
shut out from our view the moon, the lurid stars, and the people-
less streets — but the boding and the memory of Evil, they
would not be so excluded. There were things around us and
about of which I could render no distinct account, — things mate-
rial and spiritual : heaviness in the atmosphere, a sense of suffo-
cation, anxiety — and, above all, that terrible state of existence

EDGAR ALLAN POE 2/7

Which the nervous experience when the senses are keenly living
and awake, and meanwhile the powers of thought lie dormant. A
dead weight hung upon us. It hung upon our limbs, upon the
household furniture, upon the goblets from which we drank; and
all things were depressed, and borne down thereby — all things
save only the flames of the seven iron lamps which illumined our
revel. Uprearing themselves in tall slender lines of light, they
thus remained burning, all pallid and motionless; and in the
mirror which their lustre formed upon the round table of ebony at
which we sat, each of us there assembled beheld the pallor of his
own countenance, and the unquiet glare in the downcast eyes of
his companions. Yet we laughed and were merry in our proper
way — which was hysterical: and sang the songs of Anacreon
— which are madness; and drank deeply — although the purple
wine reminded us of blood. For there was yet another tenant
of our chamber in the person of young Zoilus. Dead and at full
length he lay, enshrouded : the genius and the demon of the scene.
Alas ! he bore no portion in our mirth, save that his countenance,
distorted with the plague, and his eyes in which Death had but
half extinguished the fire of the pestilence, seemed to take such
interest in our merriment as the dead may haply take in the mer-
riment of those who are to die. But although I, Oinos, felt that
the eyes of the departed were upon me, still I forced myself not
to perceive the bitterness of their expression, and, gazing down
steadily into the depths of the ebony mirror, sang with a loud
and sonorous voice the songs of the son of Teios. But gradually
my songs they ceased, and their echoes, rolling afar off among
the sable draperies of the chamber, became weak, and undistin-
guishable, and so faded away. And lo! from among those
sable draperies where the sounds of the song departed, there
came forth a dark and undefined shadow — a shadow such as the
moon, when low in heaven, might fashion from the figure of a
man; but it was the shadow neither of man, nor of God, nor of
any familiar thing. And quivering awhile among the draperies
of the room, it at length rested in full view upon the surface of
the door of brass. But the shadow was vague, and formless, and
indefinite, and was the shadow neither of man nor of God —
neither God of Greece, nor God of Chaldaea, nor any Egyptian

278 AMERICAN PROSE

God. And the shadow rested upon the brazen doorway, and
under the arch of the entablature of the door, and moved not,
nor spoke any word, but there became stationary and remained.
And the door whereupon the shadow rested was, if I remember
aright, over against the feet of the young Zoilus enshrouded. But
we, the seven there assembled, having seen the shadow as it
came out from among the draperies, dared not steadily behold
it, but cast down our eyes, and gazed continually into the depths
of the mirror of ebony. And at length I, Oinos, speaking some
low words, demanded of the shadow its dwelling and its appella-
tion. And the shadow answered, "I am SHADOW, and my
dwelling is near to the catacombs of Ptolemais, and hard by
those dim plains of Helusion which border upon the foul Charo-
nian canal." And then did we, the seven, start from our seats in
horror, and stand trembling, and shuddering, and aghast: for the
tones in the voice of the shadow were not the tones of any one
being, but of a multitude of beings, and, varying in their cadences
from syllable to syllable, fell duskily upon our ears in the well-
remembered and familiar accents of many thousand departed
friends.

[1835. Reprinted, by permission of Herbert S. Stone and Co., from Works
of E4gar Allan Poe, vol. i, pp. 125-128.]

LIGEIA

In halls such as these, in a bridal chamber such as this, I
passed, with the Lady of Tremaine, the unhallowed hours of the
first month of our marriage — passed them with but little dis-
quietude. That my wife dreaded the fierce moodiness of my
temper — that she shunned me, and loved me but little — I could
not help perceiving; but it gave me rather pleasure than other-
wise. I loathed her with a hatred belonging more to demon than
to man. My memory flew back (oh, with what intensity of re-
gret !) to Ligeia, the beloved, the august, the beautiful, the
entombed. I revelled in recollections of her purity, of her wis-
dom, of her lofty, her ethereal nature, of her passionate, her
idolatrous love. Now, then, did my spirit fully and freely burn

EDGAR ALLAN POE 279

with more than all the fires of her own. In the excitement of
my opium dreams, (for I was habitually fettered in the shackles
of the drug,) I would call aloud upon her name, during the
silence of the night, or among the sheltered recesses of the glens
by day, as if, through the wild eagerness, the solemn passion, the
consuming ardor of my longing for the departed, I could restore
her to the pathway she had abandoned — ah, could it be forever?
— upon the earth.

About the commencement of the second month of the marriage,
the Lady Rowena was attacked with sudden illness, from which
her recovery was slow. ' The fever which consumed her, rendered
her nights uneasy; and in her perturbed state of half-slumber,
she spoke of sounds, and of motions, in and about the chamber
of the turret, which I concluded had no origin save in the dis-
temper of her fancy, or perhaps in the phantasmagoric influences
of the chamber itself. She became at length convalescent —
finally, well. Yet but a brief period elapsed, ere a second more
violent disorder again threw her upon a bed of suffering; and
from this attack her frame, at all times feeble, never altogether
recovered. Her illnesses were, after this epoch, of alarming
character, and of more alarming recurrence, defying alike the
knowledge and the great exertions of her physicians. With the
increase of the chronic disease, which had thus apparently taken
too sure hold upon her constitution to be eradicated by human
means, I could not fail to observe a similar increase in the ner-
vous irritation of her temperament, and in her excitability by
trivial causes of fear. She spoke again, and now more fre-
quently and pertinaciously, of the sounds — of the slight sounds
— and of the unusual motions among the tapestries, to which she
had formerly alluded.

One night, near the closing in of September, she pressed this
distressing subject with more than usual emphasis upon my atten-
tion.- She had just awakened from an unquiet slumber, and I
had been watching, with feelings half of anxiety, half of vague
terror, the workings of her emaciated countenance. I sat by the
side of her ebony bed, upon one of the ottomans of India. She
partly arose, and spoke, in an earnest low whisper, of sounds
which she then heard, but which I could not hear — of motions

280 AMERICAN PROSE

which she then saw, but which I could not perceive. The win^
was rushing hurriedly behind the tapestries, and I wished to show
her (what, let me confess it, I could not all believe) that those
almost inarticulate breathings, and those very gentle variations
of the figures upon the wall, were but the natural effects of that
customary rushing of the wind. But a deadly pallor, overspread-
ing her face, had proved to me that my exertions to reassure her
would be fruitless. She appeared to be fainting, and no attend-
ants were within call. I remembered where was deposited a
decanter of light wine which had been ordered by her physi-
cians, and hastened across the chamber to procure it. But, as I
stepped beneath the light of the censer, two circumstances of a
startling nature attracted my attention. I had felt that some pal-
pable although invisible object had passed lightly by my person;
and I saw that there lay upon the golden carpet, in the very
middle of the rich lustre thrown from the censer, a shadow — a
faint, indefinite shadow of angelic aspect — such as might be
fancied for the shadow of a shade. But I was wild with the
excitement of an immoderate dose of opium, and heeded these
things but little, nor spoke of them to Rowena. Having found
the wine, I recrossed the chamber, and poured out a gobletful,
which I held to the lips of the fainting lady. She had now par-
tially recovered, however, and took the vessel herself, while I
sank upon an otttoman near me, with my eyes fastened upon her
person. It was then that I became distinctly aware of a gentle
footfall upon the carpet, and near the couch; and in a second
thereafter, as Rowena was in the act of raising the wine to her
lips, I saw, or may have dreamed that I saw, fall within the
goblet, as if from some invisible spring in the atmosphere of the
room, three or four large drops of a brilliant and ruby-colored
fluid. If this I saw — not so Rowena. She swallowed the wine
unhesitatingly, and I forbore to speak to her of a circumstance
which must after all, I considered, have been but the suggestion
of a vivid imagination, rendered morbidly active by the terror of
the lady, by the opium, and by the hour.

Yet I cannot conceal it from my own perception that, immedi-
ately subsequent to the fall of the ruby-drops, a rapid change for
the worst took place in the disorder of my wife; so that, on the

EDGAR ALLAN POE 28 1

third subsequent night, the hands of her menials prepared her foi
the tomb, and on the fourth, I sat alone, with her shrouded body,
in that fantastic chamber which had received her as my bride.
Wild visions, opium-engendered, flitted shadow-like before me.
I gazed with unquiet eye upon the sarcophagi in the angles of the
room, upon the varying figures of the drapery, and upon the writh-
ing of the party-colored fires in the censer overhead. My eyes
then fell, as I called to mind the circumstances of a former night,
to the spot beneath the glare of the censer where I had seen the
faint traces of the shadow. It was there, however, no longer;
and breathing with greater freedom, I turned my glances to the
pallid and rigid figure upon the bed. Then rushed upon me a
thousand memories of Ligeia — and then came back upon my
heart, with the turbulent violence of a flood, the whole of that
unutterable woe with which I had regarded her thus enshrouded.
The night waned; and still, with a bosom full of bitter thoughts
of the one only and supremely beloved, I remained gazing upon
the body of Rowena.

It might have been midnight, or perhaps earlier, or later, for I
had taken no note of time, when a sob, low, gentle, but very dis-
tinct, startled me from my revery. I felt that it came from the
bed of ebony — the bed of death. I listened in an agony of
superstitious terror — but there was no repetition of the sound.
I strained my vision to detect any motion in the corpse — but
there was not the slightest perceptible. Yet I could not have
been deceived. I had heard the noise, however faint, and my
soul was awakened within me. I resolutely and perse veringly
kept my attention riveted upon the body. Many minutes elapsed
before any circumstance occurred tending to throw light upon the
mystery. At length it became evident that a slight, a very feeble,
and barely noticeable tinge of color had flushed up within the
cheeks, and along the sunken small veins of the eyelids. Through
a species of unutterable horror and awe, for which the language
of mortality has no sufficiently energetic expression, I felt my
heart cease to beat, my limbs grow rigid where I sat. Yet a
sense of duty finally operated to restore my self-possession. I
could no longer doubt that we had been precipitate in our prepa-
rations — that Rowena still lived. It was necessary that some

282 AMERICAN PROSE

immediate exertion be made; yet the turret was altogether apart
from the portion of the abbey tenanted by the servants — there
were none within call — I had no means of summoning them to
my aid without leaving the room for many minutes — and this I
could not venture to do. I therefore struggled alone in my en-
deavors to call back the spirit still hovering. In a short period
it was certain, however, that a relapse had taken place; the color
disappeared from both eyelid and cheek, leaving a wanness even
more than that of marble ; the lips became doubly shrivelled and
pinched up in the ghastly expression of death; a repulsive clam-
miness and coldness overspread rapidly the surface of the body;
and all the usual rigorous stiffness immediately supervened. I
fell back with a shudder upon the couch from which I had been
so startlingly aroused, and again gave myself up to passionate
waking visions of Ligeia.

An hour thus elapsed, when (could it be possible?) I was a
second time aware of some vague sound issuing from the region
of the bed. I listened — in extremity of horror. The sound
came again — it was a sigh. Rushing to the corpse, I saw — dis-
tinctly saw — a tremor upon the lips. In a minute afterwards
they relaxed, disclosing a bright line of the pearly teeth. Amaze-
ment now struggled in my bosom with the profound awe which
had hitherto reigned there alone. I felt that my vision grew
dim, that my reason wandered; and it was only by a violent
effort that I at length succeeded in nerving myself to the task
which duty thus once more had pointed out. There was now a
partial glow upon the forehead and upon the cheek and throat; a
perceptible warmth pervaded the whole frame; there was even
a slight pulsation at the heart. The lady lived; and with re-
doubled ardor I betook myself to the task of restoration. I chafed
and bathed the temples and the hands, and used every exertion
which experience, and no little medical reading, could suggest.
But in vain. Suddenly, the color fled, the pulsation ceased, the
lips resumed the expression of the dead, and, in an instant after-
ward, the whole body took upon itself the icy chilliness, the livid
hue, the intense rigidity, the sunken outline, and all the loath-
some peculiarities of that which has been, for many days, a tenant
of the tomb.

EDGAR ALLAN POE 283

And again I sunk into visions of Ligeia — and again, (what
marvel that I shudder while I write?) again there reached my
ears a low sob from the region of the ebony bed. But why shal.
I minutely detail the unspeakable horrors of that night? Why
shall I pause to relate how, time after time, until near the period
of the gray dawn, this hideous drama of revivification was re-
peated; how each terrific relapse was only into a sterner and
apparently more irredeemable death; how each agony wore the
aspect of a struggle with some invisible foe; and how each
struggle was succeeded by I know not what of wild change in the
personal appearance of the corpse ? Let me hurry to a conclusion.

The greater part of the fearful night had worn away, and she
who had been dead, once again stirred — and now more vigor-
ously than hitherto, although arousing from a dissolution more
appalling in its utter helplessness than any. I had long ceased
to struggle or to move, and remained sitting rigidly upon the
ottoman, a helpless prey to a whirl of violent emotions, of which
extreme awe was perhaps the least terrible, the least consuming.
The corpse, I repeat, stirred, and now more vigorously than
before. The hues of life flushed up with unwonted energy into
the countenance — the limbs relaxed — and, save that the eyelids
were yet pressed heavily together, and that the bandages and dra-
peries of the grave still imparted their charnel character to the
figure, I might have dreamed that Rowena had indeed shaken off,
utterly, the fetters of Death. But if this idea was not, even then,
altogether adopted, I could at least doubt no longer, when, aris-
ing from the bed, tottering, with feeble steps, with closed eyes,
and with the manner of one bewildered in a dream, the thing
that was enshrouded advanced bodily and palpably into the middle
of the apartment.

I trembled not — I stirred not — for a crowd of unutterable
fancies connected with the air, the stature, the demeanor of the
figure, rushing hurriedly through my brain, had paralyzed — had
chilled me into stone. I stirred not — but gazed upon the appa-
rition. There was a mad disorder in my thoughts — a tumult
unappeasable. Could it, indeed, be the living Rowena who con-
fronted me? Could it indeed be Rowena at all — the fair-
haired, the blue-eyed Lady Rowena Trevanion of Tremaine.

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Why, why should I doubt it? The bandage lay heavily about
the mouth — but then might it not be the mouth of the breathing
Lady of Tremaine ? And the cheeks — there were the roses as
in her noon of life — yes, these might indeed be the fair cheeks
of the living Lady of Tremaine. And the chin, with its dimples,
as in health, might it not be hers ? but had she then grown taller
since her malady ? What inexpressible madness seized me with
that thought ? One bound, and I had reached her feet ! Shrink-
ing from my touch, she let fall from her head the ghastly cere-
ments which had confined it, and there streamed forth, into the
rushing atmosphere of the chamber, huge masses of long and
dishevelled hair; // was blacker than the wings of the midnight!
And now slowly opened the eyes of the figure which stood before
me. "Here then, at least," I shrieked aloud, "can I never —
can I never be mistaken — these are the full, and the black, and
the wild eyes — of my lost love — of the Lady — of the Lady

LiGEIA."

[From Ligeia, 1838. Reprinted, by permission of Herbert S. Stone and Co.,
from Works^ vol. i, pp. 195-202.]

THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE

I have said that the whims of my friend were manifold, and
thaty<? les menagais : — for this phrase there is no English equiva-
lent. It was his humor, now, to decline all conversation on the
subject of the murder, until about noon the next day. He then
asked me, suddenly, if I had observed anything peculiar at the
scene of the atrocity.

There was something in his manner of emphasizing the word
" peculiar," which caused me to shudder, without knowing why.

" No, nothing peculiar^' I said; "nothing more, at least, than
we both saw stated in the paper."

" The Gazette f'' he replied, " has not entered, I fear, into the
unusual horror of the thing. But dismiss the idle opinions of this
])rint. It appears to me that this mystery is considered insoluble,
for the very reason which should cause it to be regarded as easy
of solution — I mean for the outre character of its features. The

EDGAR ALLAN POE 285

police are confounded by the seeming absence of motive ;
not for the murder itself, but for the atrocity of the murder.
They are puzzled, too, by the seeming impossibility of reconciling
the voices heard in contention, with the facts that no one was dis-
covered upstairs but the assassinated Mademoiselle L'Espanaye, and
that there were no means of egress without the notice of the party
ascending. The wild disorder of the room ; the corpse thrust,
with the head downward, up the chimney ; the frightful mutilation
of the body of the old lady ; these considerations, with those just
mentioned, and others which I need not mention, have sufficed to
paralyze the powers, by putting completely at fault the boasted
acumen, of the government agents. They have fallen into the gross
but common error of confounding the unusual with the abstruse.
But it is by these deviations from the plane of the ordinary that
reason feels its way, if at all, in its search for the true. In in-
vestigations such as we are now pursuing, it should not be so much
asked * what has occurred,' as ' what has occurred that has never
occurred before.* In fact, the facility with which I shall arrive, or
have arrived, at the solution of this mystery, is in the direct ratio
of its apparent insolubility in the eyes of the police."

I stared at the speaker in mute astonishment.

" I am now awaiting," continued he, looking toward the door of
our apartment — "I am now awaiting a person who, although per-
haps not the perpetrator of these butcheries, must have been in
some measure implicated in their perpetration. Of the worst por-
tion of the crimes committed, it is probable that he is innocent.
I hope that I am right in this supposition ; for upon it I build my
expectation of reading the entire riddle. I look for the man
here — in this room — every moment. It is true that he may
not arrive ; but the probability is that he will. Should he come,
it will be necessary to detain him. Here are pistols \ and
we both know how to use them when occasion demands theii
use."

I took the pistols, scarcely knowing what I did, or believing
what I heard, while Dupin went on, very much as if in a soHloquy.
I have already spoken of his abstract manner at such times.
His discourse was addressed to myself; but his voice, although
by no means loud, had that intonation which is commonly em-

286 AMERICAN PROSE

ployed in speaking to some one at a great distance. His eyes,
vacant in expression, regarded only the wall.

"That the voices heard in contention," he said, "by the party
upon the stairs, were not the voices of the women themselves,
was fully proved by the evidence. This relieves us of all doubt
upon the question whether the old lady could have first destroyed
the daughter, and afterward have committed suicide. I speak of
this point chiefly for the sake of method ; for the strength of
Madam L'Espanaye would have been utterly unequal to the task
of thrusting her daughter's corpse up the chimney as it was found ;
and the nature of the wounds upon her own person entirely pre-
clude the idea of self-destruction. Murder, then, has been com-
mitted by some third party ; and the voices of this third party
were those heard in contention. Let me now advert — not to the
whole testimony respecting these voices — but to what "w^^ peculiar
in that testimony. Did you observe anything peculiar about it?"

I remarked that, while all the witnesses agreed in supposing the
gruff voice to be that of a Frenchman, there was much disagree-
ment in regard to the shrill, or, as one individual termed it, the
harsh voice.

" That was the evidence itself," said Dupin, " but it was not the
peculiarity of the evidence. You have observed nothing distinc-
tive. Yet there was something to be observed. The witnesses,
as you remark, agreed about the gruff voice ; they were here unan-
imous. But in regard to the shrill voice, the peculiarity is —
not that they disagreed — but that, while an Italian, an English-
man, a Spaniard, a Hollander, and a Frenchman attempted to
describe it, each one spoke of it as that of a foreigner. Each is
sure that it was not the voice of one of his own countrymen.
Each likens it — not to the voice of an individual of any nation
with whose language he is conversant — but the converse. The
Frenchman supposes it the voice of a Spaniard, and * might have
distinguished some yfoxdi^had he been acquainted with the Spanish^
The Dutchman maintains it to have been that of a Frenchman ;
but we find it stated that * not understanding French^ this witness
was examined through an interpreter,^ The Englishman thinks it
the voice of a German, and * does not understand German^ The
Spaniard Ms sure' that it was that of an Englishman, but 'judges

EDGAR ALLAN POE 287

by the intonation * altogether, * as he has no knowledge of the Eng-
lish.^ The Italian believes it the voice of a Russian, but ^ has
never conversed with a native of Russia^ A second Frenchman
differs, moreover, with the first, and is positive that the voice
was that of an Italian ; but, not being cognizant of that tongue^
is, like the Spaniard, * convinced by the intonation.* Now, how
strangely unusual must that voice have really been, about which
such testimony as this could have been elicited ! — in whose tones,
even, denizens of the five great divisions of Europe could rec-
ognize nothing familiar! You will say that it might have been
the voice of an Asiatic — of an Afincan. Neither Asiatics nor
Africans abound in Paris ; but, without denying the inference, I
will now merely call your attention to three points. The voice is
termed by one witness * harsh rather than shrill.' It is represented
by two others to have been * quick and unequal No words —
no sounds resembling words — were by any witness mentioned as-
distinguishable.

" I know not, " continued Dupin, " what impression I may have
made, so far, upon your own understanding ; but I do not hesitate
to say that legitimate deductions even from this portion of the
testimony — the portion respecting the gruff and shrill voices —
are in themselves sufficient to engender a suspicion which should
give direction to all farther progress in the investigation of the
mystery. I said ' legitimate deductions ' ; but my meaning is not
thus fully expressed. I designed to iftiply that the deductions are
the sole proper ones, and that the suspicion arises inevitably from
them as the single result. What the suspicion is, however, I will
not say just yet. I merely wish you to bear in mind that, with
myself, it was sufficiently forcible to give a definite form — a certain
tendency — to my inquiries in the chamber.

" Let us now transport ourselves, in fancy, to this chamber.
What shall we first seek here ? The means of egress employed by
the murderers. It is not too much to say that neither of us
believe in preternatural events. Madame and Mademoiselle
L'Espanaye were not destroyed by spirits. The doers of the
deed were material, and escaped materially. Then how? Fortu-
nately there is but one mode of reasoning upon the point, and
that mode must lead us to a definite decision. — Let us examine,

288 AMERICAN PROSE

each by each, the possible means of egress. It is clear that the
assassins were in the room where Mademoiselle L'Espanaye
was found, or at least in the room adjoining, when the party
ascended the stairs. It is then only from these two apartments
that we have to seek issues. The police have laid bare the floors,
the ceilings, and the masonry of the walls, in every direction. No
secret issues could have escaped their vigilance. But, not trust-
ing to their eyes, I examined with my own. There were, then, no
secret issues. Both doors leading from the rooms into the passage
were securely locked, with the keys inside. Let us turn to the
chimneys. These, although of ordinary width for some eight or
ten feet above the hearths, will not admit, throughout their extent,
the body of a large cat. The impossibility of egress, by means
already stated, being thus absolute, we are reduced to the windows.
Through those of the front room no one could have escaped with-
out notice from the crowd in the street. The murderers must have
passed, then, through those of the back room. Now, brought to
this conclusion in so unequivocal a manner as we are, it is not our
part, as reasoners, to reject it on account of apparent impossibilities.
It is only left for us to prove that these apparent * impossibilies '
are, in reality, not such.

"There are two windows in the chamber. One of them is
unobstructed by furniture, and is wholly visible. The lower por-
tion of the other is hidden from view by the head of the unwieldy
bedstead which is thrust clbse up against it. The former was
found securely fastened from within. It resisted the utmost force
of those who endeavored to raise it. A large gimlet-hole had been
pierced in its frame to the left, and a very stout nail was found
fitted therein, nearly to the head. Upon examining the other
window, a similar nail was seen similarly fitted in it ; and a vigor-
ous attempt to raise this sash failed also. The police were now
entirely satisfied that egress had not been in these directions.
And, therefore, it was thought a matter of supererogation to with-
draw the nail and open the windows.

" My own examination was somewhat more particular, and was
so for the reason I have just given ; because here it was, I knew,
that all apparent impossibilities must be proved to be not such in
reality.

EDGAR ALLAtJ POE 289

" I proceeded to think thus — a posteriori. The murderers did
escape ftoiti one of these windows. This being so, they could not
have refastened the sashes from the inside, as they were found
fastened : the consideration which put a stop, through its obvious-
ness, to the scrutiny of the police in this quarter. Yet the sashes
were fastened. They must, then, have the power of fastening
themselves. There was no escape from this conclusion. I stepped
to the unobstructed casement, withdrew the nail with some diffi-
culty, and attempted to raise the sash. It resisted all my efforts,
as I had anticipated. A concealed spring must, I now knew, exist ;
and this corroboration of my idea convinced me that my premises,
at least, were correct, however mysterious still appeared the cir-
cumstances attending the nails. A careful search soon brought to
light the hidden spring. I pressed it, and, satisfied with the dis-
covery, forbore to upraise the sash.

" I now replaced the nail and regarded it attentively. A person
passing out through this window might have reclosed it, and the
spring would have caught — but the nail could not have been re-
placed. The conclusion was plain, and again narrowed in the
field of my investigations. The assassins must have escaped
through the other window. Supposing, then, the springs upon
each sash to be the same, as was probable, there must be found a
difference between the nails, or at least between the modes of their
fixture. Getting upon the sacking of the bedstead, I looked over
the head-board minutely at the second casement. Passing my
hand down behind the board, I readily discovered and pressed
the spring, which was, as I had supposed, identical in character with
its neighbor. I now looked at the nail. It was as stout as the
other, and apparently fitted in the same manner — driven in nearly
up to the head.

" You will say that I was puzzled ; but, if you think so, you must
have misunderstood the nature of the inductions. To use a sport-
ing phrase, 1 had not been once ' at fault.' The scent had never
for an instant been lost. There was no flaw in any link of the
chain. I had traced the secret to its ultimate result, — and that
result was the nail. It had, I say, in every respect, the appearance
of its fellow in the other window; but this fact was an absolute
nullity (conclusive as it might seem to be) when compared with

290 AMERICAN PROSE

the consideration that here, at this point, terminated the clew,
'There must be something wrong,' I said, 'about the nail.' I
touched it ; and the head, with about a quarter of an inch of the
shank, came off in my fingers. The rest of the shank was in the
gimlet-hole, where it had been broken off. The fracture was an
old one (for its edges were incrusted with rust), and had appar-
ently been accomplished by the blow of a hammer, which had par-
tially embedded, in the top of the bottom sash, the head portion
of the nail. I now carefully replaced this head portion in the in-
dentation whence I had taken it, and the resemblance to a per-
fect nail was complete — the fissure was invisible. Pressing the
spring, I gently raised the sash for a few inches ; the head went
up with it, remaining firm in its bed. I closed the window, and
the semblance of the whole nail was again perfect.

''The riddle, so far, was now unriddled. The assassin had
escaped through the window which looked upon the bed. Drop-
ping of its own accord upon his exit (or perhaps purposely closed),
it had become fastened by the spring; and it was the reten-
tion of this spring which had been mistaken by the police for
that of the nail — further inquiry being thus considered unneces-
sary.

" The next question is that of the mode of descent. Upon this
point I have been satisfied in my walk with you around the build-
ing. About five feet and a half from the casement in question
there runs a lightning-rod. From this rod it would have been
impossible for any one to reach the window itself, to say nothing
of entering it. I observed, however, that the shutters of the
fourth story were of the peculiar kind called by Parisian carpen-
ters ferrades — a kind rarely employed at the present day, but fre-
quently seen upon very old mansions at Lyons and Bordeaux.
They are in the form of an ordinary door (a single, not a folding
door), except that the lower half is latticed or worked in open
trellis — thus affording an excellent hold for the hands. In the
present instance these shutters are fully three feet and a half broad.
When we saw them from the rear of the house, they were both
about half open — that is to say, they stood off at right angles
from the wall. It is probable that the police, as well as myself,
examined the back of the tenement ; but, if so, in looking at these

EDGAR ALLAN POE 29I

ferrades in the line of their breadth (as they must have done),
they did not perceive this great breadth itself, or, at all events,
failed to take it into due consideration. In fact, having once sat-
isfied themselves that no egress could have been made in this
quarter, they would naturally bestow here a very cursory exami-
nation. It was clear to me, however, that the shutter belonging to
the window at the head of the bed would, if swung fully back to
the wall, reach to within two feet of the lightning-rod. It was
also evident that, by exertion of a very unusual degree of activity
and courage, an entrance into the window, from the rod, might
have been thus effected. By reaching to the distance of two feet
and a half (we now suppose the shutter open to its whole extent),
a robber might have taken a firm grasp upon the trellis-work.
Letting go, then, his hold upon the rod, placing his feet securely
against the wall, and springing boldly from it, he might have
swung the shutter so as to close it, and, if we imagine the win-
dow open at the time, might even have swung himself into the
room.

" I wish you to bear especially in mind that I have spoken of a
very unusual degree of activity as requisite to success in so hazard-
ous and so difficult a feat. It is my design to show you first, that
the thing might possibly have been accomplished : but, secondly
and chiefly, I wish to impress upon your understanding the very
extraordinary, the almost preternatural, character of that agility
which could have accomplished it.

" You will say, no doubt, using the language of the law, that * to
make out my case ' I should rather undervalue than insist upon a
full estimation of the activity required in this matter. This may
be the practice in law, but it is not the usage of reason. My ulti-
mate object is only the truth. My immediate purpose is to lead
you to place in juxtaposition that very unusual activity, of which
I have just spoken, with that very peculiar shrill (or harsh) and
unequal voice, about whose nationality no two persons could be
found to agree, and in whose utterance no syllabification could be
detected."

x\t these words a vague and half-formed conception of the
meaning of Dupin flitted over my mind. I seemed to be upon
the verge of comprehension, without power to comprehend ; as

292 AMERICAN PROSE

men, at times, find themselves upon the brink of remembrance,
without being able, in the end, to remember. My friend went on
with his discourse.

" You will see,** he said, " that I have shifted the question from
the mode of egress to that of ingress. It was my design to con-
vey the idea that both were effected- in the same manner, at the
same point. Let us now revert to the interior of the room. Let
;is survey the appearances here. The drawers of the bureau, it
is said, had been rifled, although many articles of apparel still
remained within them. The conclusion here is absurd. It is a
mere guess — a very silly one — and no more. How are we to
know that the articles found in the drawers were not all these
drawers had originally contained ? • Madame L*Espanaye and her
daughter lived an exceedingly retired life — saw no company,
seldom went out, had little use for numerous changes of habili-
ment. Those found were at least of as good quality as any likely
to be possessed by these ladies. If a thief had taken any, why
did he not take the best — why did he not take all ? In a word,
why did he abandon four thousand francs in gold to encumber
himself with a bundle of linen? The gold was abandoned.
Nearly the whole sum mentioned by Monsieur Mignaud, the
banker, was discovered, in bags, upon the floor. I wish you,
therefore, to discard from your thoughts the blundering idea of
motive, engendered in the brains of the police by that portion of
the evidence which speaks of money delivered at the door of the
house. Coincidences ten times as remarkable as this (the deliv-
ery of the money, and murder committed within three days upon
the party receiving it) happen to all of us every hour of our lives,
without attracting even momentary notice. Coincidences, in gen-
eral, are great stumbling-blocks in the way of that class of thinkers
who have been educated to know nothing of the theory of proba-
bilities : that theory to which the most glorious objects of human
research are indebted for the most glorious of illustration. In the
present instance, had the gold been gone, the fact of its delivery
three days before would have formed something more than a coin-
cidence. It would have been corroborative of this idea of motive.
But, under the real circumstances of the case, if we were to sup-
pose gold the motive of this outrage, we must also imagine the

EDGAR ALLAN POE 293

perpetrator so vacillating an idiot as to have abandoned his gold
and his motive together.

" Keeping now steadily in mind the points to which I have
drawn your attention — that peculiar voice, that unusual agility,
and that startling absence of motive in a murder so singularly
atrocious as this — let us glance at the butchery itself. Here is a
woman strangled to death by manual strength, and thrust up a
chimney, head downward. Ordinary assassins employ no such
modes of murder as this. Least of all, do they thus dispose of the
murdered. In the manner of thrusting the corpse up the chim-
ney, you will admit that there was something excessively outre —
something altogether irreconcilable with our common notions of
human action, even when we suppose the actors the most de-
praved of men. Think, too, how great must have been that
strength which could have thrust the body up such an aperture
so forcibly that the united vigor of several persons was found
barely sufficient to drag it down!

" Turn, now, to other indications of the employment of a vigor
most marvellous. On the hearth were thick tresses — very thick
tresses — of gray human hair. These had been torn out by the
roots. You are aware of the great force necessar}' in tearing thus
from the head even twenty or thirty hairs together. You saw the
locks in question as well as myself. Their roots (a hideous sight !)
were clotted with fragments of the flesh of the scalp : sure token
of the prodigious power which had been exerted in uprooting
perhaps half a million of hairs at a time. The throat of the old lady
was not merely cut, but the head absolutely severed from the body :
the instrument was a mere razor. I wish you also to look at the
brutal ferocity of these deeds. Of the bruises upon the body of
Madame L'Espanaye I do not speak. Monsieur Dumas, and his
worthy coadjutor Monsieur fetienne, have pronounced that they
were inflicted by some obtuse instrument ; and so far these gentle-
men are very correct. The obtuse instrument was clearly the
stone pavement in the yard, upon which the victim had fallen
from the window which looked in upon the bed. This idea,
however simple it may now seem, escaped the police for the
same reason that the breadth of the shutters escaped them —
because, by the affair of the nails, their perceptions had been

294 AMERICAN PROSE

hermetically sealed against the possibility of the windows having
ever been opened at all.

"If now, in addition to all these things, you have properly
reflected upon the odd disorder of the chamber, we have gone
so far as to combine the ideas of an agility astounding, a strength
superhuman, a ferocity brutal, a butchery without motive, a
grotesquerie in horror absolutely alien from humanity, and a voice
foreign in tone to the ears of men of many nations, and de-
void of all distinct or intelligible syllabification. What result,
then, has ensued? What impression have I made upon your
fancy?"

I felt a creeping of the flesh as Dupin asked me the question.
" A madman," I said, " has done this deed — some raving maniac,
escaped from a neighboring Maison de SanteJ^

" In some respects," he replied, " your idea is not irrelevant.
But the voices of madmen, even in their wildest paroxysms, are
never found to tally with that peculiar voice heard upon the stairs..
Madmen are of some nation, and their language, however inco-
herent in its words, has always the coherence of syllabification.
Besides, the hair of a madman is not such as I now hold in my
hand. I disentangled this little tuft from the rigidly clutched
fingers of Madame L'Espanaye. Tell me what you can make
of it."

"Dupin!" I said, completely unnerved; "this hair is most
unusual — this is no human hair."

"I have not asserted that it is," said he; "but, before we
decide this point, I wish you to glance at the little sketch I have
here traced upon this paper. It is a fac-simile drawing of what
has been described in one portion of the testimony as 'dark
bruises, and deep indentations of finger nails,* upon the throat
of Mademoiselle L'Espanaye, and in another (by Messrs. Dumas
and 6tienne), as a 'series of livid spots, evidently the impression
of fingers.'

"You will perceive," continued my friend, spreading out the
paper upon the table before us, " that this drawing gives the idea
of a firm and fixed hold. There is no slipping apparent. Each
finger has retained — possibly until the death of the victim —
the fearful grasp by which it originally imbedded itself. Attempt,

EDGAR ALLAN POE 295

now, to place all your fingers, at the same time, in the respective
impressions as you see them."
I made the attempt in vain.

" We are possibly not giving this matter a fair trial," he said.
" The paper is spread out upon a plane surface ; but the human
throat is cylindrical. Here is a billet of wood, the circumference
of which is about that of the throat. Wrap the drawing around it,
and try the experiment again."

I did so ; but the difficulty was even more obvious than before.
" This," I said, " is the mark of no human hand."
"Read now," replied Dupin, "this passage from Cuvier."
It was a minute anatomical and generally descriptive account of
the large fulvous ourang-outang of the East Indian Islands. The
gigantic stature, the prodigious strength and activity, the wild
ferocity, and the imitative propensities of these mammalia are
sufficiently well known to all. I understood the full horrors of
the murder at once.

[From The Murders in the Rue Morgue ^ 1 84 1. Reprinted, by permission
of Herbert S. Stone and Co., from Works, vol. iii, pp. 74-89.]

THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH

But, in spite of these things, it was a gay and magnificent
revel. The tastes of the Prince were peculiar. He had a fine
eye for colors and effects. He disregarded the decora of mere
fashion. His plans were bold and fiery, and his conceptions
glowed with barbaric lustre. There are some who would have
thought him mad. His followers felt that he was not. It was
necessary to hear and see and touch him to be sure that he was
not.

He had directed, in great part, the movable embellishments of
the seven chambers, upon occasion of this great fite; and it was
his own guiding taste which had given character to the masquer-
aders. Be sure they were grotesque. There were much glare
and glitter and piquancy and phantasm — much of what has been
since seen in Hernani. There were arabesque figures with un-
suited limbs and appointments. There were delirious fancies

296 AMERICAN PROSE

such as the madman fashions. There was much of the beautiful,
much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the ter-
rible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust.
To and fro in the seven chambers there stalked, in fact, a multi-
tude of dreams. And these — the dreams — writhed in and
about, taking hue from the rooms, and causing the wild music
of the orchestra to seem as the echo of their steps. And, anon,
there strikes the ebony clock which stands in the hall of the
velvet. And then, for a moment, all is still, and all is silent
save the voice of the clock. The dreams are stiff-frozen as they
stand. But the echoes of the chime die away — they have en-
dured but an instant — and a light, half-subdued laughter floats
after them as they depart. And now again the music swells,
and the dreams live, and writhe to and fro more merrily than
ever, taking hue from the many tinted windows through which
stream the rays from the tripods. But to the chamber which lies
most westwardly of the seven, there are now none of the maskers
who venture: for the night is waning away, and there flows a
ruddier light through the blood-colored panes; and the blackness
of the sable drapery appalls; and to him whose foot falls upon
the sable carpet, there comes from the near clock of ebony a
muffled peal more solemnly emphatic than any which reaches
their ears who indulge in the more remote gayeties of the other
apartments.

But these other apartments were densely crowded, and in them
beat feverishly the heart of life. And the revel went whirlingly
on, until at length there commenced the sounding of midnight
upon the clock. And then the music ceased, as I have told;
and the evolutions of the waltzers wer-e quieted; and there was
an uneasy cessation of all things as before. But now there were
twelve strokes to be sounded by the bell of the clock ; and thus it
happened, perhaps, that more of thought crept, with more of
time, into the meditations of the thoughtful among those who
revelled. And thus too it happened, perhaps, that before the last
echoes of the last chime had utterly sunk into silence, there were
many individuals in the crowd who had found leisure to become
aware of the presence of a masked figure which had arrested the
attention of no single individual before. And the rumor of this

EDGAR ALLAN FOE 297

new presence having spread itself whisperingly around, there
arose at length from the whole company a buzz, or murmur, ex-
pressive of disapprobation and surprise — then, finally, of terror,
of horror, and of disgust.

In an assembly of phantasms such as I have painted, it may
well be supposed that no ordinary appearance could have excited
such sensation. In truth the masquerade license of the night was
nearly unlimited; but the figure in question had out-Heroded
Herod, and gone beyond the bounds of even the Prince's indefi-
nite decorum. There are chords in the hearts of the most reck-
less which cannot be touched without emotion. Even with the
utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are
matters of which no jest can be made. The whole company,
indeed, seemed now deeply to feel that in the costume and bear-
ing of the stranger neither wit nor propriety existed. The figure
was tall and gaunt, and shrouded from head to foot in the habili-
ments of the grave. The mask which concealed the visage was
made so nearly to resemble the countenance of a stiffened corpse
that the closest scrutiny must have had difficulty in detecting the
cheat. And yet all this might have been endured, if not ap-
proved, by the mad revellers around. But the mummer had gone
so far as to assume the type of the Red Death. His vesture was
dabbled in blood — and his broad brow, with all the features of
the face, was besprinkled with the scarlet horror.

When the eyes of Prince Prosper© fell upon this spectral image
(which with a slow and solemn movement, as if more fully to
sustain its rdle, stalked to and fro among the waltzers) he was seen
to be convulsed, in the first moment, with a strong shudder either
of terror or distaste ; but, in the next, his brow reddened with rage.

"Who dares?" he demanded hoarsely of the courtiers who
stood near him — "who dares insult us with this blasphemous
mockery ? Seize him and unmask him — that we may know whom
we have to hang at sunrise, from the battlements ! "

It was in the eastern or blue chamber in which stood the Prince
Prospero as he uttered these words. They rang throughout the
seven rooms loudly and clearly — for the Prince was a bold and
robust man, and the music had become hushed at the waving of
his hand.

298 AMERICAN PROSE

It was in the blue room where stood the Prince, with a group
of pale courtiers by his side. At first, as he spoke, there was a
slight rushing movement of this group in the direction of the in-
truder, who at the moment was also near at hand, and now, with
deliberate and stately step, made closer approach to the speaker.
But from a certain nameless awe with which the mad assumption
of the mummer had inspired the whole party, there were found
none who put forth hands to seize him; so that, unimpeded, he
passed within a yard of the Prince's person; and, while the vast
assembly, as if with one impulse, shrank from the centres of the
rooms to the walls, he made his way uninterruptedly, but with
the same solemn and measured step which had distinguished him
from the first, through the blue chamber to the purple — through
the purple to the green — through the green to the orange —
through this again to the white — and even thence to the violet,
ere a decided movement had been made to arrest him. It was
then, however, that the Prince Prospero, maddening with rage
and the shame of his own momentary cowardice, rushed hurriedly
through the six chambers, while none followed him on account
of a deadly terror that had seized upon all. He bore aloft a
drawn dagger, and had approached, in rapid impetuosity, to
within three or four feet of the retreating figure, when the latter,
having attained the extremity of the velvet apartment, turned
suddenly and confronted his pursuer. There was a sharp cry —
and the dagger dropped gleaming upon the sable carpet, upon
which, instantly afterwards, fell prostrate in death the Prince
Prospero. Then, summoning the wild courage of despair, a
throng of the revellers at once threw themselves into the black
apartment, and, seizing the mummer, whose tall figure stood erect
and motionless within the shadow of the ebony clock, gasped in
unutterable horror at finding the grave cerements and corpse-like
mask, which they handled with so violent a rudeness, untenanted
by any tangible form.

And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death.
He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped
the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died
each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the
ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the

EDGAR ALLAN POE 299

flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and
the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.

[From The Masque of the Red Death, 1842. Reprinted, by permission of
Herbert S. Stone and Co., from Works, vol i, pp. 252-257.]

THE PROSE TALE

But it is of his tales that I desire principally to speak. The
tale proper, in my opinion, affords unquestionably the fairest
field for the exercise of the loftiest talent, which can be afforded
by the wide domains of mere prose. Were I bidden to say how
the highest genius could be most advantageously employed for
the best display of its own powers, I should answer, without hesi-
tation — in the composition of a rhymed poem, not to exceed in
length what might be perused in an hour. Within this limit
alone can the highest order of true poetry exist. I need only here
to say, upon this topic, that, in almost all classes of composition
the unity of effect or impression is a point of the greatest impor-
tance. It is clear, moreover, that this unity cannot be thoroughly
preserved in productions whose perusal cannot be completed at
one sitting. We may continue the reading of a prose composition,
from the very nature of prose itself, much longer than we can
persevere, to any good purpose, in the perusal of a poem. This
latter, if truly fulfilling the demands of the poetic sentiment, in-
duces an exaltation of the soul which cannot be long sustained.
All high excitements are necessarily transient. Thus a long poem
is a paradox. And, without unity of impression, the deepest ef-
fects cannot be brought about. Epics were the offspring of an
imperfect sense of Art, and their reign is no more. A poem too
brief may produce a vivid, but never an intense or enduting
impression. Without a certain continuity of effort — without a
certain duration or repetition of purpose — the soul is never
deeply moved. There must be the dropping of the water upon
the rock. De B^ranger has wrought brilliant things, pungent and
spirit-stirring; but, like all immassive bodies, they lack momen-
tum, and thus fail to satisfy the Poetic Sentiment. They sparkle

300 AMERICAN PROSE

and excite, but, from want of continuity, fail deeply to impress.
Extreme brevity will degenerate into epigrammatism; but the sin
of extreme length is even more unpardonable. In medio tuHssi-
tnus ibis.

Were I called upon, however, to designate that class of com-
position which, next to such a poem as I have suggested, should
best fulfil the demands of high genius — should offer it the most
advantageous field of exertion — I should unhesitatingly speak of
the prose tale, as Mr. Hawthorne has here exemplified it. I
allude to the short prose narrative, requiring from a half-hour to
one or two hours in its perusal. The ordinary novel is objec-
tionable, from its length, for reasons already stated in substance.
As it cannot be read at one sitting, it deprives itself, of course,
of the immense force derivable from totality. Worldly interests
intervening during the pauses of perusal, modify, annul, or coun-
teract, in greater or less degree, the impression of the book. But
simple cessation in reading would, of itself, be sufficient to de-
stroy the true unity. In the brief tale, however, the author is en-
abled to carry out the fulness of his intention, be it what it may.
During the hour of perusal the soul of the reader is at the writer's
control. There are no external or extrinsic influences — resulting
from weariness or interruption.

A skilful literary artist has constructed a tale. If wise, he has
not fashioned his thoughts to accommodate his incidents; but
having conceived with deliberate care, a certain unique or single
effect to be wrought out, he then invents such incidents — he then
combines such events as may best aid him in establishing this
preconceived effect. If his very initial sentence tends not to the
outbringing of this effect, then he has failed in his first step. In
the whole composition there should be no word written, of which
the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one preestablished
desfgn. And by such means, with such care and skill, a picture
is at length painted which leaves in the mind of him who con-
templates it with a kindred art, a sense of the fullest satisfaction.
The idea of the tale has been presented unblemished, because
undisturbed; and this is an end unattainable by the novel.
Undue brevity is just as exceptionable here as in the poem;
but undue length is yet more to be avoided.

EDGAR ALLAN POE 3OI

We have said that the tale has a point of superiority even over
the poem. In fact, while the rhythm of this latter is an essential
aid in the development of the poem*s highest idea — the idea of
the Beautiful — the artificialities of this rhythm are an insepa-
rable bar to the development of all points of thought or expres-
sion which have their basis in Truth. But Truth is often, and
in a very great degree, the aiiji of the tale. Some of the finest
tales are tales of ratiocination. Thus the field of this species of
composition, if not in so elevated a region on the mountain of
Mind, is a tableland of far vaster extent than the domain of the
mere poem. Its products are never so rich, but infinitely more
numerous, and more appreciable by the mass of mankind. The
writer of the prose tale, in short, may bring to his theme a vast
variety of modes or inflections of thought and expression — (the
ratiocinative, for example, the sarcastic, or the humorous) which
are not only antagonistical to the nature of the poem, but abso-
lutely forbidden by one of its most peculiar and indispensable
adjuncts; we allude, of course, to rhythm. It may be added,
here, par parenthese, that the author who aims at the purely
beautiful in a prose tale is laboring at a great disadvantage.
For Beauty can be better treated in the poem. Not so with
terror, or passion, or horror, or a multitude of such other points.
And here it will be seen how full of prejudice are the usual
animadversions against those tales of effect, many fine examples
of which were found in the earlier numbers of Blackwood. The
impressions produced were wrought in a legitimate sphere of
action, and constituted a legitimate although sometimes an
exaggerated interest. They were relished by every man of
genius: although there were found many men of genius who
condemned them without just ground. The true critic will but
demand that the design intended be accomplished, to the fullest
extent, by the means most advantageously applicable.

We have very few American tales of real merit — we may say,
indeed, none, with the exception of The Tales of a Traveller,
of Washington Irving, and these Twice-Told Tales of Mr. Haw-
thorne. Some of the pieces of Mr. John Neal abound in vigor
and originality; but, in general, his compositions of this class
are excessively diffuse, extravagant, and indicative of an imper-

302 AMERICAN PROSE

feet sentiment of Art. Articles at random are, now and then,
met with in our periodicals which might be advantageously com-
pared with the best effusions of the British magazines; but, upon
the whole, we are far behind our progenitors in this department
of literature.

[From Hawthorne's Tales, 1842. Reprinted, with the permission of Her-
bert S. Stone and Co., from Works, vol. vii, pp. 29-33.]

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

[Oliver Wendell Holmes was born in Cambridge, Mass., Aug. 29, 1809, and
died in Boston, Oct. 7, 1894. He was educated at Phillips Andover Academy,
and at Harvard, where he belonged to the class of 1829. There he came under
Unitarian influence, and belonged to a rather gay club of students. So strong
was his reaction from earlier religious influences that even in the Pilgrim'' 5
Progress^ much as he felt its literary power, he was violently repelled by the
religious system it contains. During his early education, as later, he was a skip-
ping reader, tasting many books, taking few entire. He showed his tendency
toward literary expression by his connection with a college periodical, and by
the conscious literary form of his early letters. He liked especially the Eng-
lish classics, Pope's Homer, and the Encyclopaedia. After graduation he went
for a year to the Dane Law School. Disliking the study, he began immedi-
ately to study medicine in Boston. After graduation he went to Europe, in
the spring of 1833, studying medicine for a year at Paris, travelling a little,
and returning in the autumn of 1835. '^^^ Xit\\. year he began practice and pub-
lished later some medical essays which stood well and contained discoveries
of some importance. In 1847 ^^ became Parkman Professor of Anatomy and
Physiology in the medical school of Harvard University, a post which he held
for thirty-five years. A considerable part of his time was devoted to lecture
tours about the country. His connection with the Atlantic Monthly began
in 1857, through the influence of James Russell Lowell. The Autocrat of the
Breakfast Table appeared in that periodical in 1857-58, The Professor at
the Breakfast Table in 1859, The Poet at the Breakfast Table in 1872, and
Over the Teacups in 1 891. Besides this series he published three novels,
Elsie Venner (1861), The Guardian Angel (1867), and A Mortal Antipathy
(1885), and two biographies, a Life offohn Lothrop Motley (1879) and 2. Life of
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1885). Pages from an Old Volume of Life contains
essays written from 1857 to 1881. His time went more and more to literary
pursuits and less to medicine as his life advanced.]

Oliver Wendell Holmes has left several of the most popular
volumes of prose in American literature. The Autocrat of the
Breakfast Table ^ The Professor at the Breakfast Table, and, to a
less extent, The Poet at the Breakfast Table, are among the small
number of essays which have a large American public. Although

303

304 AMERICAN PROSE

they are essays, the freedom of their form — in turn narrative,
dramatic, and expository — matches the variety of their subjects,
so that their unity is in the personality of the writer. It is mainly
wit that makes these books live, but the wit is composed largely
of wisdom, and is carried along in an easy, flowing, and limber
style, at once familiar and finished, — a style which expresses not
only the man, but the time and place. New England has given to
literature names which are greater, but none which springs more
unmistakably from her soil. Distinct thought about life, expressed
with wit and elegance, must have much that is common to civiliza-
tion, but the breakfast-table series is as deeply saturated with New
England as it is with Oliver Wendell Holmes. Boston was the
universe to Holmes. Concentration of life and thought in one
atmosphere gave to his writings their flavor rather than their sub-
stance, and it is largely their flavor which has recommended
them to his countrymen.

Thoroughly as Holmes belongs to New England, he is part of
no group. The larger tendencies of his time, which found their
expression in the transcendental movement, left the Autocrat un-
touched. Democracy never whispered its vaguer poetry in his
ear. His part of New England life was not its aspiration, but its
Yankee shrewdness, — youthful, independent, wide-awake^ matter
of fact, even in the statement of truths tinged with imagination.
Vagueness, color, a reaching out after something not yet seen, is
the characteristic of the bulk of New England's greatest literature.
Clearness, precision, confidence, are the elements of Holmes's
Yankee mind. In the Autocrat this concrete and witty intellect is
at its gayest. The Professor has less dash, and more ripeness and
mild breadth. Naturally, therefore, the earlier book is still the
more popular, and its successor the favorite of the most cultivated
fraction of readers. It is not less witty. It is only less epigram-
matic and more leisurely. As these books, begun when the author's
powers were at their height, took from his mind its brightest crys-
tals, the world has put the two later instalments of the series on
a lower shelf. Of the novels, the first two were popular in their
time, and Elsie Venner is still much read, but they have never
been treated as important contributions. Holmes's mind was not
constructive, but discursive. He could create characters and tell

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 30S

stories, but it was in the manner of conversation. The best things
in his fiction are digressions. The psychological interest domi-
nates, and most of the formal development seems an effort of the
will. " A Romance of Destiny," the sub- title of Elsie Venner^
suggests his attitude toward his " medicated novels," as an old
lady called them. Every one of his volumes contains brilliant
passages, from the medical essays to Over the Teacups^ but if pos-
terity shall seek the author in the Autocrat, the Professor, and the
Poet, it will find the whole of him. In his happiest passages he
is all those persons : an autocrat, revelling in his own personality ;
a professor, with information, and interest in the larger psychology ;
and a poet, who loved Pope and would have been the same had
Wordsworth never lived. " This series of papers," he tells us,
•* was not the result of an express premeditation, but was, as I
may say, dipped from the running stream of my thoughts." In
it he has left such an intimate picture of himself as daily con-
versation would have given.

The types of New England character which are sketched dra-
matically and sharply in these papers did as much to give them
their immediate success as the humorous philosophy of the princi-
pal speaker. They range from the broadly comic to the pathetic,
although humor and pathos are never far apart. The landlady and
her daughter, the schoolmistress. Little Boston, and as many others,
have become familiar persons, but perhaps the most brilliantly
executed, next to the autographical character, is " the young man
whom they call John." In him American humor, independence,
and crudity take their most distinctive and most entertaining form.
He is what the Autocrat would have been without culture, — the
observant wit in its primitive state. Next to him come the series
of loquacious and unreasonable women, universal personages, talk-
ing not about the details of the life about them, so much as about
the things which people everywhere discuss, yet proving their na-
tionality in the turn of every phrase. The characters which are
less comic, especially those which are supposed to have a touch
of aristocratic distinction, are not so firmly drawn. The single
passages which stand out for individual brilliancy are usually those
in which the Autocrat moralizes in his own person, covering im-
portant subjects with his special genial comment. He felt, kindly

306 AMERICAN PROSE

and sympathetically, the general tragedies of life, but his mode ot
putting even tragic truths was a playful one. For instance, noth-
ing impressed him more constantly than the battle between the
weak and the strong, and this is one way of stating it : " Each
generation strangles and drowns its predecessor. The young Fee-
jeean carries a cord in his girdle for his father's neck ; the young
American, a string of propositions or syllogisms in his brain to
finish the same relative ; the old man says, ' My son, I have swal-
lowed and digested the wisdom of the past.' The young man
says, * Sire, I proceed to swallow and digest thee with all thou
knowest.' "

Not unrelated to Holmes's humorous attitude toward every
part of life, and to his dislike of the vague and his content with
what truth can be put clearly in a sentence, was his entire absence
from the great political movements which reached their climax
while he was quietly smiling in his study. His readers would
hardly know that there had been an abolition movement or a war,
except from occasional not altogether sympathetic passages. He
was sceptical about everything new except science. On that firm
ground alone he felt at home, and probably at least nine tenths of
his metaphors have a more or less distinctly scientific origin. The
great, indistinct, ethical enthusiasm of the nation, which gradually
carried along the cautious Emerson, and brought such a noble
response from Lowell, was not to the taste of Holmes. He
was the nice gentleman, full of delicacy, who did not like to see
the proprieties disturbed. The sword and the trumpet were un-
pleasant objects. He suggested, as his doctor's sign, " the small-
est fever gratefully received," and such was the tone in which he
liked best to handle other things as serious as fevers. The Ameri-
can nature has its enthusiastic, idealistic side, but even more ob-
vious and pervading is its fatalistic, good-humored jocosity, which
could hardly be represented more vividly than it was in the mind
and character of Dr. Holmes. The Autocrat has given pleasure
to thousands, but he has had little more influence on life or letters
than the shirt-sleeved philosopher in a Yankee post-office who
lazily retails quaint witticisms about his neighbors. Holmes is
without successors, as he was without predecessors. The world
amused him, he amused it, and each left the other in statu quo.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 307

Although he lacked sympathy with change, everything simple
and unchanging, however ludicrous, had his friendly appreciation.
When he speaks of his " recollection of the two women, drifting
upon their vocabularies as upon a shoreless ocean," surely the
geniality and the kindliness are as visible as the fun. " Better too
few words from the woman we love than too many ; while she is
silent nature is working for her ; while she talks she is working for
herself." That again is his dominant note, a smiling hospitality
for the fixed truths, not the less genuine that it was always adorned
with friendly satire. To his detached observation the world was
fragmentary and capricious, and much of its conversation, which
buzzed loudly about his ears, signified nothing. He notices in
entering a railway station that the cars are traveUing by their own
momentum, the engijie having noiselessly left them some time ago.
" Indeed, you would not have suspected that you were travelling
on the strength of a dead fact if you had not seen the engine run-
ning away from you on a side track." So it is with women, their
words are detached from their thoughts, but run on so rapidly that
we never know the difference. "Well, they govern the world, —
these sweet-lipped women, — because beauty is the index of a
larger fact than wisdom. . . . Wisdom is the abstract of the past,
but beauty is the promise of the future." It is always the same,
this half- tender sentiment for the every-day important facts of life,
mixed with an irrepressible amusement at the absurdity of their
expression.

A man of a rambling, genial wisdom, without a system, whimsi-
cal and charming, reflecting in his style the quality of the air he
breathed, but showing no more definite influence than that of
Sterne, and forming none, is not easy to place in a literary hie-
rarchy. Some of the books of Holmes are likely to be a per-
manent part of our literature, because of their finish, conciseness,
humor, and national atmosphere, and because there are no others
like them. They promise to outlive many which have had a
deeper influence. The man with a message is frequently laid in
the ground when his message is accepted, while the man who has
put into artistic form the old universal things which are ever
young, and speaks in a tone that is suggestive and cheering, has
always the same reason for existence.

Norman Hapgood

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

[Harriet Elizabeth Beecher was the daughter of Lyman Beecher, a distin-
guished old school Congregational divine of New England, and sister of
Henry Ward Beecher. She was born at Litchfield, Conn., on June 14, 181 1
(not 181 2). At the age of thirteen she went to Hartford, Conn., to attend the
school of her elder sister Catherine, and was afterwards a teacher there. In
1832 the family removed to Cincinnati, Ohio, and in 1835 ^^^ ^^ married to
Professor Calvin E. Stowe of the Lane Theological Seminary in that city. Her
first work was The May Flower, or Sketches of the Descendants of the Pilgrims
(1849). The next year the Stowes went to Brunswick, Me., and Uncle Tom*s
Cabin was written there during 1850, first printed as a serial in the Washington
National Era (the author writing it under pressure, to keep pace with its
appearance), and published in book form in 1852. The success of the novel
was instant and immense. No other work of American authorship has ap-
proximated to such a circulation. Copies have sold by the hundreds of
thousands, and there are translations in some thirty tongues. In 1852 Pro-
fessor Stowe was called to the Theological Seminary at Andover, Mass. In
1864 the family removed to Hartford, where Mrs. Stowe resided continuously
until her death on July I, 1896. Her principal works are: Uncle Tom*s
Cabin (1852); Dred, a Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp (1856); The Min-
ister's Wooing ( 1859) ; 7 he Pearl of Orr's Island ( 1862) ; Agnes of Sorrento
(1862); Oldtown Folks (1869); and Sam Lawson's Fireside Stories (1871).]

By writing Uncle TonCs Cabin Mrs. Stowe took her place at
once as something more than a literary figure. She became a
moral force, operative to great results ; she helped to make Amer-
ican history. The uniquely wide acceptance of her remarkable
story was due, in large measure, to the timeliness of its topic, and
the perfervid character of its didacticism. The novel was not a
calculated literary performance, much less a tour de force of letters.
Its maker was a New England woman, a member of one of the
most distinctive and typical families of the land. She was dow-
ered with a strong religious instinct, was bred in a spiritual atmos-
phere, and trained in a way to make conscience hypersensitive.

308

HARRIET BEECHER ST OWE 309

Such a woman as this — a young New England wife and mother,
in touch with common American life — felt to the uttermost keen-
ness the horrors of human slavery ; she saw them in relation to
the political evils of her day and country, written, as it were, in
blood. Then, with her soul white-hot with spiritual passion, she
found a vent for her feelings.

The tale is a notable example of improvisation, and the motive
is frankly non-literary. Herein lie at once its merits and defects.
Technically, this piece of fiction — and it is quite the fashion of
critics nowadays to say it — is an uncertain, even at times a slov-
enly performance. The narrative style is loose and careless, and
there is little or no distinction of manner, — which is only to say
again that we have here the work of the improvisatrice. Nor has
the dialogue, admirable as it often is, the verisimilitude to life
which is now demanded in modern fiction of the highest class.
But to stop here is to falsify with a half truth. Uncle Tom's Cabin
is essentially a romance of power ; genius is behind it, after all.
It is a vital presentment of dramatic scenes out of human life ;
it has reality, picturesqueness, vivid characterization, emotional
force — main denotements of romantic writing. Its dramatic nat-
ure is implied plainly by the persistence of the story as a stage
play. These qualities have been instrumental in securing for the
narration its wonderful vogue. Had Mrs. Stowe's masterpiece
been nothing but an earnest sermon of little literary worth, it
would not to-day compel explanation. Such creations, faulty as
they may be, quicken our sense of the dynamics of literature.
They draw our eyes away from the objective side, the side of
technique and law, to consider the inner impulse, the unpredica-
ble gift. That Uncle Tom's Cabin is not without prejudice as a
picture of life may be granted readily ; it were strange, indeed, if
a New England woman of Mrs. Stowe's antecedents and convic-
tions had presented the facts of slaveholding in the South with
the colorless impartiality of a historian a generation after the
Civil War. Yet the author certainly took pains to be accurate.
She had visited the Southern plantations, she had observed at
first hand. The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, published shortly
after the novel appeared, shows how careful she was to base her
representations upon the actual. Considering her position, the

310 AMERICAN PROSE

Story is remarkable for this striving after the truth, rather than for
misstatements. It errs perhaps in emphasis of the abuses of sla-
very, so that the chiaroscuro is untrue. Nevertheless, the bright
side is not ignored : St. Clare and Miss Ophelia are in the tale as
well as Haley and Legree. Moreover, the whole question of fair-
ness of statement is aside from that of the merit of a piece of fic-
tion which presents effectively, in its main outlines of passion,
tragedy, and homely humor, a typical phase of American life now
passed away.

In comparison with this genuine contribution to the fiction of
our day, everything else written by Mrs. Stowe is dwarfed into
insignificance. She was voluminous, and much of her work had
but an ephemeral value. It is her fate to be a one-book author.
Some of her literary creations, however, have more than a passing
interest. Dred^ a Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp is an impres-
sive story, dealing with material similar to that handled in Uncle
Tom's Cabin. Nor should it be forgotten that Mrs. Stowe was a
pioneer in the sketch of New England country life, a field since
enriched by the labors of Miss Jewett, Miss Wilkins, and others.
Oldtown Folks and The Minister's Wooing present truthfully and
with charm the manners and characters of their place and time.
Such a figure as Sam Lawson, in the former book, is a permanent
addition to our portrait gallery of fiction. More than the nasal
tone, the idiosyncrasy of dress, and the superficial social customs of
rural communities a generation ago are reproduced in such studies ;
one is made to see the physiognomy of the New England mind and
soul under earlier, simpler conditions. As social documents these
sketches have an abiding value to the student of American life,
while they are by no means without attraction for the present-day
reader of fiction as such.

The recent apologetic tone of native criticism, with respect to
Mrs. Stowe*s work, is a not unnatural reaction from the excessive
laudation following hard upon the appearance of Uncle Tom's
Cabin. The later critical attitude also indicates an increased sensi-
tiveness to technique in literary art. It is likely that in the end
this reactionary zeal will moderate so far as to allow of a juster
judgment. That novel will then stand forth as a great piece of
fiction, unequal, faulty, yet the product of power, and Mrs. Stowe

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 311

will go down in our history not only as an American whose literary
work is so involved in our political development that it is difficult
to estimate her work as literature, but also as one of the few writers
in the United States whose imaginative creation has held attention
beyond the author's own life and land.

Richard Burton

312 AMERICAN PROSE

ELIZA'S ESCAPE

The bell here rang, and Tom was summoned to the parlor.

"Tom," said his master, kindly, "I want you to notice that I
give this gentleman bonds to forfeit a thousand dollars if you are
not on the spot when he wants you; he's going to-day to look
after his other business, and you can have the day to yourself.
Go anywhere you like, boy."

"Thank you, Mas'r," said Tom.

"And mind yerself," said the trader, "and don't come it over
your master with any o' yer nigger tricks; for Til take every cent
out of him, if you an't thar. If he'd hear to me he wouldn't
trust any on ye — slippery as eels! "

" Mas'r," said Tom, — and he stood very straight, — "I was jist
eight years old when old Missis put you into my arms, and you
wasn't a year old. 'Thar,' say she, *Tom, that's to be your
young Mas'r; take good care on him,' says she.* And now I jist
ask you, Mas'r, have I ever broke word to you, or gone contrary
to you, 'specially since I was a Christian?"

Mr. Shelby was fairly overcome, and the tears rose to his eyes.

" My good boy, " said he, " the Lord knows you say but the truth;
and if I was able to help it, all the world shouldn't buy you."

" And sure as I am a Christian woman," said Mrs. Shelby, "you
shall be redeemed as soon as I can any way bring together means.
Sir," she said to Haley, " take good account of whom you sell him
to, and let me know."

"Lor, yes, for that matter," said the trader, "I may bring him
up in a year, not much the wuss for wear, and trade him back."

"I'll trade with you then, and make it for your advantage,"
said Mrs. Shelby.

"Of course," said the trader, "all's equal with me; li'ves trade
'em up as down, so I does a good business. All I want is a livin',
you know, ma'am; that's all any on us wants, I s'pose."

Mr. and Mrs. Shelby both felt annoyed and degraded by the
familiar impudence of the trader, and yet both saw the absolute
necessity of putting a constraint on their feelings. The more
hopelessly sordid and insensible he appeared, the greater became

Harriet BEECffER stoive 313

Mrs, Shelby's dread of his succeeding in recapturing Eliza and
her child, and of course the greater her motive for detaining him
by every female artifice. She therefore graciously smiled, as-
sented, chatted familiarly, and did all she could to make time
pass imperceptibly.

At two o'clock Sam and Andy brought the horses up to the
posts, apparently greatly refreshed and invigorated by the scamper
of the morning.

Sara was there new oiled from dinner, with an abundance of
zealous and ready officiousness. As Haley approached, he was
boasting, in flourishing style, to Andy, of the evident and emi-
nent success of the operation, now that he had "farly come to it."

"Your master, I s'pose, don't keep no dogs," said Haley,
thoughtfully, as he prepared to mount.

"Heaps on 'em," said Sam, triumphantly; "(hat's Bruno —
he's a roarer 1 and, besides that, 'bout every nigger of us keeps
3 pup of some natur or uther."

"Poh!" said Haley, — and he said something else, too, with
regard to the said dogs, at which Sam muttered,

"I don't see no use cussin' on 'em, no way,"

"But your master don't keep no dogs (I pretty much know he
don't) for track in' out niggers."

Sam knew exactly what he meant, but he kept on a look of
earnest and desperate simplicity,

"Our dogs all smells round considable sharp. I spect they's
the kind, though they han't never had no practice. They's far
dogs, though, at most anything, if you'd get 'em started. Here,
Bruno," he called, whistling to the lumbering Newfoundland, who
came pitching tumultuously toward them.

"Vou go hang! " said Haley, getting up. "Come, tumble up

Sam tumbled up accordingly, dexterously contriving to tickle
Andy as he did so, which occasioned Andy to split out into a
laugh, greatly to Haley's indignation, who made a cut at him
with his riding-whip.

"I's 'stonished at yer, Andy," said Sam, with awful gravity.
"This yer's a seris bisness, Andy. Yer mustn't be a makin
game. This yer an't no way to help Mas'r."

314 AMERICAN PROSE

"I shall take the straight road to the river," said Haley,
decidedly, after they had come to the boundaries of the estate.
" I know the way of all of 'em, — they makes tracks for the under-
ground."

"Sartin," said Sam, "dat's de idee. Mas*r Haley hits de
thing right in de middle. Now, der's two roads to de river, —
de dirt road and der pike, — which Mas'r mean to take? "

Andy looked up innocently at Sam, surprised at hearing this
new geographical fact, but instantly confirmed what he said, by
a vehement reiteration.

"Cause," said Sam, "I*d rather be 'clined to 'magine that
•Lizy*d take de dirt road, bein' it*s the least travelled."

Haley, notwithstanding that he was a very old bird, and natu-
rally inclined to be suspicious of chaff, was rather brought up by
this view of the case.

"If yer wam*t both on yer such cussed liars, now!" he said,
contemplatively, as he pondered a moment.

The pensive, reflective tone in which this was spoken appeared
to amuse Andy prodigiously, and he drew a little behind, and
shook so as apparently to run a great risk of falling off his horse,
while Sam's face was immovably composed into the most doleful
gravity.

"Course," said Sam, "Mas*r can do as he*d ruther; go de
straight road, if Mas'r thinks best, — it's all one to us. Now,
when I study 'pon it, I think the straight road de best, deridedfy.*^

"She would naturally go a lonesome way," said Haley, think-
ing aloud, and not minding Sam's remark.

"Dar an't no sayin'," said Sam; "gals is pecular; they never
does nothin' ye thinks they will; mose gen'lly the contrar. Gals
is nat'Uy made contrary; and so, if you thinks they've gone one
road, it is sartin you'd better go t'other, and then you'll be
sure to find 'em. Now, my private 'pinion is, Lizy took der dirt
road; so I think we'd better take de straight one."

This profound generic view of the female sex did not seem to
dispose Haley particularly to the straight road; and he announced
decidedly that he should go the other, and asked Sam when they
should come to it.

"A little piece ahead," said Sam, giving a wink to Andy with

HARRIET BEE CHER ST OWE 315

the eye which was on Andy's side of the head; and he added,
gravely, "but I've studded on de matter, and I'm quite clar we
ought not to go dat ar way. I nebber been over it no way. It's
despit lonesome, and we might lose our way, — whar we'd come
to, de Lord only knows."

"Nevertheless," said Haley, "I shall go that way."

"Now I think on't, I think I hearn 'em tell that dat ar road
was all fenced up and down by der creek, and thar, an't it,
Andy?"

Andy wasn't certain; he'd only "hearn tell" about that road,
but never been over it. In short, he was strictly non-committal.

Haley, accustomed to strike the balance of probabilities between
lies of greater or lesser magnitude, thought that it lay in favor of
the dirt road aforesaid. The mention of the thing he thought he
perceived was involuntary on Sam's part at first, and his confused
attempts to dissuade him he set down to a desperate lying on
second thoughts, as being unwilling to implicate Eliza.

When, therefore, Sam indicated the road, Haley plunged briskly
into it, followed by Sam and Andy.

Now, the road, in fact, was an old one, that had formerly been
a thoroughfare to the river, but abandoned for many years after
the laying of the new pike. It was open for about an hour's
ride, and after that it was cut across by various farms and fences.
Sam knew this fact perfectly well, — indeed, the road had been
so long closed up, that Andy had never heard of it. He therefore
rode along with an air of dutiful submission, only groaning and
vociferating occasionally that 'twas "desp't rough, and bad for
Jerry's foot."

"Now, I jest give yer warning," said Haley, "I know yer; yer
won't get me to turn off this yer road, with all yer fussin' — so
you shet up ! "

"Mas'r will go his own way!'* said Sam, with rueful submis-
sion, at the same time winking most portentously to Andy, whose
delight was now very near the explosive point.

Sam was in wonderful spirits, — professed to keep a very brisk
look-out, — at one time exclaiming that he saw "a gal's bonnet"
on the top of some distant eminence, or calling to Andy " if that
thar wasn't *Lizy' down in the hollow;" always making these

3l6 AMERICAN PROSE

exclamations in some rough or craggy part of the road, where the
sudden quickening of speed was a special inconvenience to all
parties concerned, and thus keeping Haley in a state of constant
commotion.

After riding about an hour in this way, the whole party made
a precipitate and tumultuous descent into a barn-yard belonging
to a large farming establishment. Not a soul was in sight, all the
hands being employed in the fields; but, as the bam stood con-
spicuously and plainly square across the road, it was evident that
their journey in that direction had reached a decided finale.

"Warn't dot ar what I telled Mas*r? '* said Sam, with an air of
injured innocence. " How does strange gentleman spect to know
more about a country dan de natives born and raised? "

"You rascal! " said Haley, "you knew all about this."

"Didn't I tell yer I know'd, and yer wouldn't believe me?
I telled Mas'r 'twas all shet up, and fenced up, and I didn't
spect we could get through, — Andy heard me."

It was all too true to be disputed, and the unlucky man had to
pocket his wrath with the best grace he was able, and all three
faced to the right about, and took up their line of march for the
highway.

In consequence of all the various delays, it was about three
quarters of an hour after Eliza had laid her child to sleep in the
village tavern that the party came riding into the same place.
Eliza was standing by the window, looking out in another direc-
tion, when Sam's quick eye caught a glimpse of her. Haley and
Andy were two yards behind. At this crisis, Sam contrived to
have his hat blown off, and uttered a loud and characteristic
ejaculation, which startled her at once; she drew suddenly back;
the whole train swept by the window, round to the front door.

A thousand lives seemed to be concentrated in that one moment
to Eliza. Her room opened by a side door to the river. She
caught her child, and sprang down the steps towards it. The
trader caught a full glimpse of her, just as she was disappearing
down the bank; and throwing himself from his horse, and calling
loudly on Sam and Andy, he was after her like a hound after a
deer. In that dizzy moment her feet to her scarce seemed to
touch the ground, and a moment brought her to the water's edge.

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 317

Right on behind they came; and, nerved with strength such as
God gives only to the desperate, with one wild cry and flying
leap, she vaulted sheer over the turbid current by the shore, on
to the raft of ice beyond. It was a desperate leap — impossible
to anything but madness and despair; and Haley, Sam, and Andy
instinctively cried out, and lifted up their hands, as she did it.

The huge green fragment of ice on which she alighted pitched
and creaked as her weight came on it, but she stayed there not a
moment. With wild cries and desperate energy she leaped to
another and still another cake ; — stumbling — leaping — slipping
— ^ springing upwards again! Her shoes are gone — her stock-
ings cut from her feet — while blood marked every step; but she
saw nothing, felt nothing, till dimly, as in a dream, she saw the
Ohio side, and a man helping her up the bank.

"Yer a brave gal, now, whoever ye ar ! '* said the man, with an
oath.

Eliza recognized the voice and face of a man who owned a
farm not far from her old home.

" O, Mr. Symmes ! — save me — do save me — do hide me ! **
said Eliza.

"Why, what»s this?" said the man. "Why, if Han't Shelby's
gal ! "

" My child ! — this boy ! — he'd sold him ! There is his Mas'r, "
she said, pointing to the Kentucky shore. "O, Mr. Symmes,
you've got a little boy!"

"So I have," said the man, as he roughly, but kindly, drew her
up the steep bank. "Besides, you're a right brave gal. I like
grit, wherever I see it."

When they had gained the top of the bank, the man paused.
"I'd be glad to do something for ye," said he; "but then there's
nowhar I could take ye. The best I can do is to tell ye to go
/i^^r," said he, pointing to a large white house which stood by
itself, off the main street of the village. "Go thar; they're kind
folks. Thar's no kind o' danger but they'll help you, — they're
up to all that sort o' thing."

"The Lord bless you!" said Eliza, earnestly.

"No 'casion, no 'casion in the world," said the man. "What
Pve done's of no 'count."

3l8 AMERICAN PROSE

"And, oh, surely, sir, you won't tell any one!"

"Go to thunder, gal! What do you take a feller for? In
course not," said the man. "Come, now, go along like a likely,
sensible gal, as you are. You've arnt your liberty, and you shall
have it, for all me."

The woman folded her child to her bosom, and walked
firmly and swiftly away. The man stood and looked after
her.

"Shelby, now, mebbe won't think this yer the most neighborly
thing in the world; but what's a feller to do? If he catches one
of my gals in the same ^yiy he's welcome to pay back. Somehow
I never could see no kind o* crittur a strivin' and pantin', and
trying to clar theirselves, with the dogs arter *em, and go agin
'em. Besides, I don't see no kind of 'casion for me to be hunter
and catcher for other folks, neither."

So spoke this poor, heathenish Kentuckian, who had not been
instructed in his constitutional relations, and consequently was
betrayed into acting in a sort of Christianized manner, which, if
he had been better situated and more enlightened, he would not
have been left to do.

Haley had stood a perfectly amazed spectator of the scene, till
Eliza had disappeared up the bank, when he turned a blank, in-
quiring look on Sam and Andy.

"That ar was a tolable fair stroke of business," said Sam.

"The gal's got seven devils in her, I believe!" said Haley.
"How like a wildcat she jumped! "

"Wal, now," said Sam, scratching his head, "I hope Mas'r'll
scuse us tryin' dat ar road. Don't think I feel spry enough for
dat ar, no way ! " and Sam gave a hoarse chuckle.

" You laugh ! " said the trader, with a growl.

"Lord bless you, Mas'r, I couldn't help it, now," said Sam,
giving way to the long pent-up delight of his soul. "She looked
so curi's, a leapin' and springin' — ice a crackin' — and only to
hear her, — plump ! ker chunk ! ker splash ! Spring ! Lord I how
she goes it 1 " and Sam and Andy laughed till the tears rolled
down their cheeks.

"I'll make yer laugh t'other side yer mouths! " said the trader,
laying about their heads with his riding-whip.

HARRIET BEECHER ST OWE 319

Both ducked, and ran shouting up the bank, and were on their
horses before he was up.

"Good evening, Mas*r!" said Sam, with much gravity. "/
berry much spect Missis be anxious 'bout Jerry. Mas*r Haley
won't want us no longer. Missis wouldn't hear of our ridin'
the critters over Lizy's bridge to-night; " and with a facetious
poke into Andy's ribs, he started off, followed by the latter, at
full speed, — their shouts of laughter coming faintly on the wind.

[From Uncle Tom^s Cabin; or. Life among the Lowly, 1 852, chapter 7.
The text is that of the first edition.]

TOPSY

Miss Ophelia's ideas of education, like all her other ideas,
were very set and definite; and of the kind that prevailed in New
England a century ago, and which are still preserved in some very
retired and unsophisticated parts, where there are no railroads.
As nearly as could be expressed, they could be comprised in very
few words: to teach them to mind when they were spoken to; to
teach them the catechism, sewing, and reading; and to whip them
if they told lies. And though, of course, in the flood of light
that is now poured on education, these are left far away in the
rear, yet it is an undisputed fact that our grandmothers raised
some tolerably fair men and women under this regime, as many
of us can remember and testify. At all events. Miss Ophelia
knew of nothing else to do; and, therefore, applied her mind to
her heathen with the best diligence she could command.

The child was announced and considered in the family as Miss
Ophelia's girl; and, as she was looked upon with no gracious eye
in the kitchen, Miss Ophelia resolved to confine her sphere of
operation and instruction chiefly to her own chamber. With
a self-sacrifice which some of our readers will appreciate, she
resolved, instead of comfortably making her own bed, sweeping
and dusting her own chamber, — which she had hitherto done,
in utter scorn of all offers of help from the chambermaid of the
establishment, — to condemn herself to the martyrdom of instruct-
ing Topsy to perform these operations, — ah, woe the day! Did

320 AMERICAN PROSE

any of our readers ever do the same, they will appreciate the
amount of her self-sacrifice.

Miss Ophelia began with Topsy by taking her into her chamber,
the first morning, and solemnly commencing a course of instruc-
tion in the art and mystery of bed-making.

Behold, then, Topsy, washed and shorn of all the little braided
tails wherein her heart had delighted, arrayed in a clean gown,
with well-starched apron, standing reverently before Miss Ophelia,
with an expression of solemnity well befitting a funeral.

"Now, Topsy, I'm going to show you just how my bed is to
be made. I am very particular about my bed. You must learn
exactly how to do it."

"Yes, ma'am," says Topsy, with a deep sigh, and a face of
woful earnestness.

" Now, Topsy, look here \ — this is the hem of the sheet, — this
is the right side of the sheet, and this is the wrong; — will you
remember?"

"Yes, ma'am," says Topsy, with another sigh.

" Well, now, the under sheet you must bring over the bolster,

— so, — and tuck it clear down under the mattress nice and
smooth, — so, — do you see ? "

"Yes, ma'am," said Topsy, with profound attention.
"But the upper sheet," said Miss Ophelia, " must be brought
down in this way, and tucked under firm and smooth at the foot,

— so, — the narrow hem at the foot."

"Yes, ma'am," said Topsy, as before; but we will add, what
Miss Ophelia did not see, that, during the time when the good
lady's back was turned, in the zeal of her manipulations, the
young disciple had contrived to snatch a pair of gloves and a
ribbon, which she had adroitly slipped into her sleeves, and
stood with her hands dutifully folded, as before.

"Now, Topsy, let's see you do this,'* said Miss Ophelia, pull-
ing off the clothes, and seating herself.

Topsy, with great gravity and adroitness, went through the exer-
cise completely to Miss Ophelia's satisfaction; smoothing the
sheets, patting out every wrinkle, and exhibiting, through the whole
process, a gravity and seriousness with which her instructress was
greatly edified. By an unlucky slip, however, a fluttering frag-

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 32 1

ment of the ribbon hung out of one of her sleeves, just as she was
finishing, and caught Miss Ophelia's attention. Instantly she
pounced upon it. "What's this? You naughty, wicked child,

— you've been stealing this!"

The ribbon was pulled out of Topsy's own sleeve, yet was she
not in the least disconcerted; she only looked at it with an air of
the most surprised and unconscious innocence.

"Laws! why, that ar's Miss Feely's ribbon, an't it? How
could it a got caught in my sleeve?"

"Topsy, you naughty girl, don't you tell me a lie, — you stole
that ribbon ! "

"Missis, I declar for't, I didn't; — never seed it till dis yer
blessed minnit."

"Topsy," said Miss Ophelia, "don't you know it's wicked to
tell lies?"

"I never tells no lies, Miss Feely," said Topsy, with virtuous
gravity; "it's jist the truth I've been a tellin' now, and an't
nolhin' else."

"Topsy, I shall have to whip you, if you tell lies so."

" Laws, Missis, if you's to whip all day, couldn't say no other
way," said Topsy, beginning to blubber. "I never seed dat ar,

— it must a got caught in my sleeve. Miss Feely must have left
it on the bed, and it got caught in the clothes, and so got in my
sleeve."

Miss Ophelia was so indignant at the barefaced lie, that she
caught the child, and shook her.

" Don't you tell me that again ! "

The shake brought the gloves on the floor, from the other sleeve.

"There, you!" said Miss Ophelia, "will you tell me now, you
didn't steal the ribbon?"

Topsy now confessed to the gloves, but still persisted in deny-
ing the ribbon.

"Now, Topsy," said Miss Ophelia, "if you'll confess all about
it, I won't whip you this time."

Thus adjured, Topsy confessed to the ribbon and gloves, with
woful protestations of penitence.

" Well, now, tell me. I know you must have taken other things
since you have been in the house, for I let you run about all day

322 AMERICAN PROSE

yesterday. Now, tell me if you took anything, and I shan't whip
you."

''Laws, Missis! I took Miss Eva's red thing she wars on her
neck."

"You did, you naughty child! — Well, what else?"

"I took Rosa's yer-rings, — them red ones."

"Go bring them to me this minute, both of *em.**

"Laws, Missis! I can't, — they's burnt up!"

" Burnt up ! — what a story ! Go get 'em, or I'll whip you."

Topsy, with loud protestations, and tears, and groans, declared
that she could not. " They's burnt up, — they was."

"What did you burn 'em up for?" said Miss Ophelia.

"Cause I' s wicked, — I is. I's mighty wicked, any how. I
can't help it."

Just at this moment, Eva came innocently into the room, with
the identical coral necklace on her neck.

"Why, Eva, where did you get your necklace?" said Miss
Ophelia.

"Get it? Why, I've had it on all day," said Eva.

"Did you have it on yesterday? "

" Yes ; and what is funny. Aunty, I had it on all night. I for-
got to take it off when I went to bed."

Miss Ophelia looked perfectly bewildered ; the more so, as
Rosa, at that instant, came into the room, with a basket of newly
ironed linen poised on her head, and the coral ear-drops shaking
in her ears !

" I'm sure I can't tell anything what to do with such a child! "
she said, in despair. " What in the world did you tell me you
took those things for, Topsy?"

"Why, Missis said I must 'fess; and I couldn't think of
nothin' else to 'fess," said Topsy, rubbing her eyes.

" But, of coursfe, I didn't want you to confess things you didn't
do," said Miss Ophelia; "that's telling a lie, just as much as the
other."

"Laws, now, is it?" said Topsy, with an air of innocent
wonder.

[From Uncle Tom's Cabin; or. Life among the Lowly ^ 1852, chapter
The text is that of the first edition.]

JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY

[John Lothrop Motley was born at Dorchester, now a part of Boston, April
15, 1 8 14, and died near Dorchester, in England, May 29, 1877. His hfe was
passed in dealing with the affairs of nations, either of the past, as historian, or
of the present, as diplomatist; he therefore lived much of his life abroad. He
was first a student of law at Gottingen and Berlin, and later minister to Austria
and then to England. He was also, however, led to Europe by the necessities
of his studies on the history of Holland and of Europe in the sixteenth cen-
tury. He published : The Rise of the Dutch Republic, in 1856, History of the
United Netherlands^ in 1 86 1-8, and The Life and Death of John of Barne^
veld {iSy 4). Before settling down to the historical work which has made him
famous, he wrote two novels, Morton^ s Hope (1839) and Merry Mount ( 1849).
He was a man of charming personality, as may be gathered from his Correspond-
ence (1889), or from the Memoir (1879), by Oliver Wendell Holmes.]

It is not unnatural at first to compare Motley with Prescott.
Indeed, the comparison forced itself upon the mind of the younger
man at the very beginning of his career as a historian, when, being
already heart and soul committed to the Revolt of the Netherlands,
he learned that Prescott had already collected materials for a
history of Philip the Second. The elder scholar behaved in the
most Hberal and sympathetic manner, encouraged the younger
student most earnestly to go on, and assured him that " no two
books ever injured each other." He was not wrong, in this case
at least. A comparison of these two great historians serves chiefly
to emphasize the strong points of each.

Both are distinguished by immense thoroughness in dealing with
their materials, both by the challenging care of their style. With
their characteristics as historians we are here not closely concerned,
but we certainly cannot neglect the matter. As a historian there
can be no doubt of Motley's hard work, breadth of knowledge,
sound accuracy, sincerity. The same thing can be said of Pres-
cott, who has a most engaging and disinterested impartiality,
besides. But Motley could not have been disinterestedly im]

323

324 AMERICAN PROSE

tial. He was writing, not of Spaniards and Moors, Incas and
Aztecs, but of the rise of a republic, of a father of his country, of
the growth of religious toleration. He was just, but he could not
be disinterested. Indeed, by his very nature Motley was not a
disinterested observer. No novelist can afford to be disinterested :
it is too catching. Motley did not become famous as a novelist,
certainly, but he had many of the gifts of a novelist. He was a
man of temperament for one thing, and a man of belief for
another. Sympathy for his subject led him to the eighty years*
war, and his position was necessarily taken beforehand. It is then
with allowance for the personal equation that Motley is impartial.

It is this very personal equation, however, which gives him his
great charm as a man of letters, and which enables him to tell a
story and to describe a thing so remarkably. It is true that this
is not all. Patient industry and hard work counted for more than
we of the laity can well understand. Prescott wrote to him of the
vivid details of the sack of Saint Quentin, which Motley had found
in a dry Documenios Ineditos, into which Prescott had never
thought to look. And any one who reads the account of the fire-
ships at the Prince of Parma's bridge, comes near being chilled at
the list of authorities at the end, which Motley fortunately did not
think necessary " to cite step by step."

But all this mass of material is fused by his spirit into a living
reality, and that is the first thing that makes Motley noteworthy
for everybody. If it be one of the tests of an author*s power that
he can make real in his reader's mind the thoughts and feelings
which are real to him. Motley stands the test well. It is true that
he has an advantage, as did Prescott, in his subject-matter, but
certainly a great part of that advantage was discovered by himself.
Everybody knew that Don John, of Austria, and Sir Philip Sidney
were romantic figures, but how about the men of Haarlem, who
sallied forth on skates and chased the Spaniards about on the ice,
or the sea beggars who raised the siege of Leyden by sailing their
fleet up to the city walls? These things had been, but had not
taken the mind. Motley had the sympathy to see life in the
facts : this was the first thing needful to enable us to see the facts
as life. He was not a close student : he was a man of the world.
Indeed, his non-scholastic character comes near interference with

JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY 325

his peculiar power. One of the charming characteristics of the
man was gentle humor, delicate satire, sedate epigram, courteous
irony. Everybody will remember how this lights up the Dutch
Republic ; in his later work we are sometimes distracted a little by
It from a matter we wish to engross us.

But Motley not only saw life in the facts, he had a very sane
feeling for dramatic and narrative propriety ; in fact, he sometimes
had even an ultra-scenic feeling. Rarely carried too far, this feeling
helped him to a remarkable epic unity in his whole work, a unity
of which the remarkable thing was that it seems so natural. * Pro-
portion and relation in time and space, these matters are as much
a part of his literary manner as picturesqueness and life. And
although the former are most noticeable in his way of looking at
things, the latter are the most noteworthy in his way of dealing
with them.

Motley continued the honorable succession of American histo-
rians and surpassed all who had preceded him because he gained
from their work. He avoided their mistakes and either imitated
or naturally had their qualities. Irving had been romantic and
Sparks had been laborious. Bancroft was an analyst, but he gave
his work the unity of a great idea ; and Prescott, an analyst too,
had moulded his material into a unity of form. Motley had some-
thing of all these things, but in him they were fused and modified
into a remarkable literary power that has never been surpassed
by an American historian. He had certain minor faults. In some
directions, notably in ease and power of narrative, he is surpassed
by Parkman. But for the large powers of a historian, as history
was understood in his day, he has no superior.

Edward Everett Hale, Jr.

326 AMERICAN PROSE

THE RELIGION OF WILLIAM OF ORANGE

During all these triumphs of Alva, the Prince of Orange had
not lost his self-possession. One after another, each of his bold,
skilfully-conceived and carefully-prepared plans had failed. Vil-
lers had been entirely discomfited at Dalhem, Cocqueville had
been cut to pieces in Picardy, and now the valiant and experi-
enced Louis had met with an entire overthrow in Friesland. The
brief success of the patriots at Heiliger Lee had been washed out
in the blood-torrents of Jemmingen. Tyranny was more trium-
phant, the provinces more timidly crouching, than ever. The
friends on whom William of Orange relied in Germany, never
enthusiastic in his cause, although many of them true-hearted and
liberal, now grew cold and anxious. For months long, his most
faithful and affectionate allies, such men as the Elector of Hesse
and the Duke of Wirtemberg, as well as the less trustworthy
Augustus of Saxony, had earnestly expressed their opinion that,
under the circumstances, his best course was to sit still and watch
the course of events.

It was known that the Emperor had written an urgent letter to
Philip on the subject of his policy in the Netherlands in general,
and concerning the position of Orange in particular. All per-
sons, from the Emperor down to the pettiest potentate, seemed
now of opinion that the Prince had better pause; that he was,
indeed, bound to wait the issue of that remonstrance. "Your
highness must sit still," said Landgrave William. "Your high-
ness must sit still," said Augustus of Saxony. "You must move
neither hand nor foot in the cause of the perishing provinces,"
said the Emperor. "Not a soldier — horse, foot, or dragoon —
shall be levied within the Empire. If you violate the peace of
the realm, and embroil us with our excellent brother and cousin
Philip, it is at your own peril. You have nothing to do but to
keep quiet and await his answer to our letter." But the Prince
knew how much effect his sitting still would produce upon the
cause of liberty and religion. He knew how much effect the
Emperor* s letter was like to have upon the heart of Philip. He
knew that the more impenetrable the darkness now gathering over

JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY 327

that land of doom which he had devoted his life to defend, the
more urgently was he forbidden to turn his face away from it in
its affliction. He knew that thousands of human souls, nigh to
perishing, were daily turning towards him as their only hope on
earth, and he was resolved, so long as he could dispense a single
ray of light, that his countenance should never be averted. It
is difficult to contemplate his character, at this period, without
being infected with a perhaps dangerous enthusiasm. It is not
an easy task coldly to analyze a nature which contained so much
of the self-sacrificing and the heroic, as well as of the adroit and
the subtle; and it is almost impossible to give utterance to the
emotions which naturally swell the heart at the contemplation of
so much active virtue, without rendering oneself liable to the
charge of excessive admiration. Through the mists of adversity,
a human form may dilate into proportions which are colossal and
deceptive. Our judgment may thus, perhaps, be led captive, but
at any rate the sentiment excited is more healthful than that in-
spired by the mere shedder of blood, by the merely selfish con-
queror. When the cause of the champion is that of human right
against tyranny, of political and religious freedom against an all-
engrossing and absolute bigotry, it is still more difficult to restrain
veneration within legitimate bounds. To liberate the souls and
bodies of millions, to maintain for a generous people, who had
well-nigh lost their all, those free institutions which their ances-
tors had bequeathed, was a noble task for any man. But here
stood a Prince of ancient race, vast possessions, imperial blood,
one of the great ones of the earth, whose pathway along the
beaten track would have been smooth and successful, but who
was ready to pour out his wealth like water, and to coin his
heart's blood, drop by drop, in this virtuous but almost desperate
cause. He felt that of a man to whom so much had been en-
trusted, much was to be asked. God had endowed him with an
incisive and comprehensive genius, unfaltering fortitude, and with
the rank and fortune which enable a man to employ his faculties,
to the injury or the happiness of his fellows, on the widest scale.
The Prince felt the reponsibility, and the world was to learn the
result.

It was about this time that a deep change came over his mind.

328 AMERICAN PROSE

Hitherto, although nominally attached to the communion of the an-
cient Church, his course of life and habits of mind had not led him
to deal very earnestly with things beyond the world. The severe
duties, the grave character of the cause to which his days were
henceforth to be devoted, had already led him to a closer inspec-
tion of the essential attributes of Christianity. He was now en-
rolled for life as a soldier of the Reformation. The Reformation
was henceforth his fatherland, the sphere of his duty and his
affection. The religious Reformers became his brethren, whether
in France, Germany, the Netherlands, or England. Yet his mind
had taken a higher flight than that of the most eminent Reformers.
His goal was not a new doctrine, but religious liberty. In an age
when to think was a crime, and when bigotry and a persecuting
spirit characterized Romanists and Lutherans, Calvinists and
Zwinglians, he had dared to announce freedom of conscience as
the great object for which noble natures should strive. In an age
when toleration was a vice, he had the manhood to cultivate it as
a virtue. His parting advice to the Reformers of the Nether-
lands, when he left them for a season in the spring of 1567, was
to sink all lesser differences in religious union. Those of the
Augsburg Confession and those of the Calvinistic Church, in their
own opinion as incapable of commingling as oil and water, were,
in his judgment, capable of friendly amalgamation. He appealed
eloquently to the good and influential of all parties to unite in
one common cause against oppression. Even while favoring daily
more and more the cause of the purified Church, and becoming
daily more alive to the corruption of Rome, he was yet willing to
tolerate all forms of worship, and to leave reason to combat error.
Without a particle of cant or fanaticism, he had become a
deeply religious man. Hitherto he had been only a man of the
world and a statesman, but from this time forth he began calmly
to rely upon God's providence in all the emergencies of his
eventful life. His letters written to his most confidential friends,
to be read only by themselves, and which have been gazed upon
by no other eyes until after the lapse of nearly three centuries,
abundantly prove his sincere and simple trust. This sentiment
was not assumed for effect to delude others, but cherished as a
secret support for himself. His religion was not a cloak to his

JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY 329

designs, but a consolation in his disasters. In his letter of in-
struction to his most confidential agent, John Bazius, while he
declared himself frankly in favor of the Protestant principles, he
expressed his extreme repugnance to the persecution of Catholics.
"Should we obtain power over any city or cities," he wrote, "let
the communities of papists be as much respected and protected
as possible. Let them be overcome, not by violence, but with
gentle-mindedness and virtuous treatment." After the terrible
disaster at Jemmingen, he had written to Louis, consoling him,
in the most affectionate language, for the unfortunate result of
his campaign. Not a word of reproach escaped from him,
although his brother had conducted the operations in Friesland,
after the battle of Heiliger Lee, in a manner quite contrary to
his own advice. He had counselled against a battle, and had
foretold a defeat; but after the battle had been fought and a
crushing defeat sustained, his language breathed only unwavering
submission to the will of God, and continued confidence in his
own courage. "You may be well assured, my brother," he wrote,
" that I have never felt anything more keenly than the pitiable mis-
fortune which has happened to you, for many reasons which you
can easily imagine. Moreover, it hinders us much in the levy
which we are making, and has greatly chilled the hearts of those
who otherwise would have been ready to give us assistance. Nev-
ertheless, since it has thus pleased God, it is necessary to have
patience and to lose not courage; conforming ourselves to His
divine will, as for my part I have determined to do in everything
which may happen, still proceeding onward in our work with His
Almighty aid." Soevts tranquillus inundis, he was never more
placid than when the storm was wildest and the night darkest.
He drew his consolations and refreshed his courage at the never-
failing fountains of Divine mercy.

"I go to-morrow," he wrote to the unworthy Anne of Saxony;
'*but when I shall return, or when I shall see you, I cannot, on
my honor, tell you with certainty. I have resolved to place my-
self in the hands of the Almighty, that He may guide me whither
it is His good pleasure that I should go. I see weii e?iough that 1
am destined to pass this life in misery and labor ^ with which I am
well content, since it thus pleases the Omnipotenty for I know that I

330 AMERICAN PROSE

have merited still greater chastisement. I only implore Him
graciously to send me strength to endure with patience."

Such language, in letters the most private, never meant to be
seen by other eyes than those to which they were addressed, gives
touching testimony to the sincere piety of his character. No man
was ever more devoted to a high purpose, no man had ever more
right to imagine himself, or less inclination to pronounce him-
self, entrusted with a divine mission. There was nothing of the
charlatan in his character. His nature was true and steadfast.
No narrow-minded usurper was ever more loyal to his own
aggrandisement than this large-hearted man to the cause of
oppressed humanity. Yet it was inevitable that baser minds
should fail to recognise his purity. While he exhausted his life
for the emancipation of a people, it was easy to ascribe all his
struggles to the hope of founding a dynasty. It was natural for
grovelling natures to search in the gross soil of self-interest for
the sustaining roots of the tree beneath whose branches a nation
found its shelter. What could they comprehend of living foun-
tains and of heavenly dews?

[From The Rise of the Dutch Republic. A History. 1856. Part iii, chap-
ter 4.]

THE RELIEF OF LEYDEN

Meantime, the besieged city was at its last gasp. The burghers
had been in a state of uncertainty for many days; being aware
that the fleet had set forth for their relief, but knowing full well
the thcftisand obstacles which it had to surmount. They had
guessed its progress by the illumination from the blazing vil-
lages; they had heard its salvos of artillery, on its arrival at
North Aa; but since then, all had been dark and mournful again,
hope and fear, in sickening alternation, distracting every breast.
They knew that the wind was unfavorable, and at the dawn of
each day every eye was turned wistfully to the vanes of the
steeples. So long as the easterly breeze prevailed, they felt, as
they anxiously stood on towers and housetops, that they must
look in vain for the welcome ocean. Yet, while thus patiently

JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY 33 1

waiting, they were literally starving; for even the misery endured
at Harlem had not reached that depth and intensity of agony to
which Leyden was now reduced. Bread, malt-cake, horse-flesh,
had entirely disappeared; dogs, cats, rats, and other vermin,
were esteemed luxuries. A small number of cows, kept as long
as possible, for their milk, still remained; but a few were killed
from day to day, and distributed in minute proportions, hardly
sufficient to support life among the famishing population. Starv-
ing wretches swarmed daily around the shambles where these
cattle were slaughtered, contending for any morsel which might
fall, and lapping eagerly the blood as it ran along the pavement;
while the hides, chopped and boiled, were greedily devoured.
Women and children, all day long, were searching gutters and
dunghills for morsels of food, which they disputed fiercely with
the famishing dogs. The green leaves were stripped from the
trees, every living herb was converted into human food, but these
expedients could not avert starvation. The daily mortality was
frightful — infants starved to death on the maternal breasts, which
famine had parched and withered; mothers dropped dead in the
streets, with their dead children in their arms. In many a house
the watchmen, in their rounds, found a whole family of corpses,
father, mother, children, side by side, for a disorder called the
plague, naturally engendered of hardship and famine, now came,
as if in kindness, to abridge the agony of the people. The pes-
tilence stalked at noonday through the city, and the doomed in-
habitants fell like grass beneath its scythe. From six thousand
to eight thousand human beings sank before this scourge alone,
yet the people resolutely held out — women and men mutually
encouraging each other to resist the entrance of their foreign foe
— an evil more horrible than pest or famine.

The missives from Valdez, who saw more vividly than the
besieged could do, the uncertainty of his own position, now
poured daily into the city, the enemy becoming more prodigal
of his vows, as he felt that the ocean might yet save the victims
from his grasp. The inhabitants, in their ignorance, had gradu-
ally abandoned their hopes of relief, but they spurned the sum-
mons to surrender. Leyden was sublime in its despair. A few
murmurs were, however, occasionally heard at the steadfastness

332 AMERICAN PROSE

of the magistrates, and a dead body was placed at the door of the
burgomaster, as a silent witness against his inflexibility. A party
of the more faint-hearted even assailed the heroic Adrian Van
der Werf with threats and reproaches as he passed through the
streets. A crowd had gathered around him, as he reached a
triangular place in the centre of the town, into which many of
the principal streets emptied themselves, and upon one side
of which stood the church of Saint Pancras, with its high brick
tower surmounted by two pointed turrets, and with two ancient
lime trees at its entrance. There stood the burgomaster, a tali,
haggard, imposing figure, with dark visage, and a tranquil but com-
manding eye. He waved his broad-leaved felt hat for silence, and
then exclaimed, in language which has been almost literally pre-
served, "What would ye, my friends? Why do you murmur that
we do not break our vows and surrender the city to the Spaniards?
a fate more horrible than the agony which she now endures. I
tell you I have made an oath to hold the city, and may God give
me strength to keep my oath! I can die but once; whether by
your hands, the enemy's, or by the hand of God. My own fate
is indifferent to me, not so that of the city intrusted to my care.
I know that we shall starve if not soon relieved; but starvation
is preferable to the dishonored death which is the only alterna-
tive. Your menaces move me not; my life is at your disposal;
here is my sword, plunge it into my breast, and divide my flesh
among you. Take my body to appease your hunger, but expect
no surrender, so long as I remain alive."

The words of the stout burgomaster inspired a new courage in
the hearts of those who heard him, and a shout of applause and
defiance arose from the famishing but enthusiastic crowd. They
left the place, after exchanging new vows of fidelity with their
magistrate, and again ascended tower and battlement to watch for
the coming fleet. From the ramparts they hurled renewed defi-
ance at the enemy. "Ye call us rat-eaters and dog-eaters," they
cried, "and it is true. So long, then, as ye hear dog bark or cat
mew within the walls, ye may know that the city holds out. And
when all has perished but ourselves, be sure that we will each
devour our left arms, retaining our right to defend our women,
our liberty, and our religion, against the foreign tyrant. Should

JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY 333

God, in his wrath, doom us to destruction, and deny us all relief,
even then will we maintain ourselves for ever against your en-
trance. When the last hour has come, with our hands we will
set fire to the city and perish, men, women, and children together
in the flames, rather than suffer our homes to be polluted and our
liberties to be crushed." Such words of defiance, thundered daily
from the battlements, sufficiently informed Valdez as to his chance
of conquering the city, either by force or fraud, but at the same
time, he felt comparatively relieved by the inactivity of Boisot's
fleet, which still lay stranded at North Aa. "As well," shouted
the Spaniards, derisively, to the citizens, " as well can the Prince
of Orange pluck the stars from the sky as bring the ocean to the
walls of Leyden for your relief."

On the 28th of September, a dove flew into the city, bringing
a letter from Admiral Boisot. In this despatch, the position of
the fleet at North Aa was described in encouraging terms, and
the inhabitants were assured that, in a very few days at fur-
thest, the long-expected relief would enter their gates. The
letter was read publicly upon the market-place, and the bells
were rung for joy. Nevertheless, on the morrow, the vanes
pointed to the east, the waters, so far from rising, continued to
sink, and Admiral Boisot was almost in despair. He wrote to
the Prince, that if the spring-tide, now to be expected, should
not, together with a strong and favorable wind, come immedi-
ately to their relief, it would be in vain to attempt anything
further, and that the expedition would, of necessity, be aban-
doned. The tempest came to their relief. A violent equinoc-
tial gale, on the night of the ist and 2nd of October, came
storming from the north-west, shifting after a few hours full
eight points, and then blowing still more violently from the
south-west. The waters of the North Sea were piled in vast
masses upon the southern coast of Holland, and then dashed
furiously landward, the ocean rising over the earth, and sweep-
ing with unrestrained power across the ruined dykes.

In the course of twenty-four hours, the fleet at North Aa, in-
stead of nine inches, had more than two feet of water. No time
was lost. The Kirk-way, which had been broken through accord-
ing to the Prince's instructions, was now completely overflowed,

334 AMERICAN PROSE

and the fleet sailed at midnight, in the midst of the storm and
darkness. A few sentinel vessels of the enemy challenged them
as they steadily rowed towards Zoeterwoude. The answer was a
flash from Boisot's cannon, lighting up the black waste of
waters. There was a fierce naval midnight battle ; a strange spec-
tacle among the branches of those quiet orchards, and with the
chimney stacks of half-submerged farm houses rising around the
contending vessels. The neighboring village of Zoeterwoude shook
with the discharges of the Zealanders' cannon, and the Spaniards
assembled in that fortress knew that the rebel Admiral was at last
afloat and on his course. The enemy's vessels were soon sunk,
their crews hurled into the waves. On went the fleet, sweeping
over the broad waters which lay between Zoeterwoude and Zwie-
ten. As they approached some shallows, which led into the great
mere, the Zealanders dashed into the sea, and with sheer strength
shouldered every vessel through. Two obstacles lay still in their
path — the forts of Zoeterwoude and Lammen, distant from the
city five hundred and two hundred and fifty yards respectively.
Strong redoubts, both well supplied with troops and artillery, they
were likely to give a rough reception to the light flotilla, but the
panic, which had hitherto driven their foes before the advancing
patriots, had reached Zoeterwoude. Hardly was the fleet in sight
when the Spaniards, in the early morning, poured out from the
fortress, and fled precipitately to the left, along a road which led
in a westerly direction towards the Hague. Their narrow path
was rapidly vanishing in the waves, and hundreds sank beneath
the constantly deepening and treacherous flood. The wild Zea-
landers, too, sprang from their vessels upon the crumbling dyke
and drove their retreating foes into the sea. They burled their
harpoons at them, with an accuracy acquired in many a polar
chase ; they plunged into the waves in the keen pursuit, attacking
them with boat-hook and dagger. The numbers who thus fell
beneath these corsairs, who neither gave nor took Quarter, were
never counted, but probably not less than a thousand perished.
The rest effected their escape to the Hague.

The first fortress was thus seized, dismantled, set on fire, and
passed, and a few strokes of the oars brought the whole fleet
close to Lammen. This last obstacle rose formidable and frown-

JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY 335

ing directly across their path. Swarming as it was with soldiers,
and bristling with artillery, it seemed to defy the armada either
to carry it by storm or to pass under its guns into the city. It
appeared that the enterprise was, after all, to founder within sight
of the long expecting and expected haven. Boisot anchored his
fleet within a respectful distance, and spent what remained of
the day in carefully reconnoitring the fort, which seemed only
too strong. In conjunction with Leyderdorp, the head-quarters
of Valdez, a mile and a half distant on the right, and within a
mile of the city, it seemed so insuperable an impediment that
Boisot wrote in despondent tone to the Prince of Orange. He
announced his intention of carrying the fort, if it were possible,
on the following morning, but if obliged to retreat, he observed,
with something like despair, that there would be nothing for it
but to wait for another gale of wind. If the waters should rise
sufficiently to enable them to make a wide detour, it might be
possible, if, in the meantime, Leyden did not starve or sur-
render, to enter its gates from the opposite side.

Meantime, the citizens had grown wild with expectation. A
dove had been despatched by Boisot, informing them of his
precise position, and a number of citizens accompanied the bur-
gomaster, at nightfall, toward the tower of Hengist — "Yonder,"
cried the magistrate, stretching out his hand towards Lammen,
"yonder, behind that fort, are bread and meat, and brethren in
thousands. Shall all this be destroyed by the Spanish guns, or
shall we rush to the rescue of our friends?" "We will tear the
fortress to fragments with our teeth and nails," was the reply,
"before the relief, so long expected, shall be wrested from us."
It was resolved that a sortie, in conjunction with the operations
of Boisot, should be made against Lammen with the earliest
dawn. Night descended upon the scene, a pitch dark night, full
of anxiety to the Spaniards, to the armada, to Leyden. Strange
sights and sounds occurred at different moments to bewilder the
anxious sentinels. A long procession of lights issuing from the
fort was seen to flit across the black face of the waters, in the dead
of night, and the whole of the city wall, between the Cow-gate and
the Tower of Burgundy, fell with a loud crash. The horror-struck
citizens thought that the Spaniards were upon them at last; the

336 AMERICAN PROSE

Spaniards imagined the noise to indicate a desperate sortie of the
citizens. Everything was vague and mysterious.

Day dawned, at length, after the feverish night, and the
Admiral prepared for the assault. Within the fortress reigned a
death-like stillness, which inspired a sickening suspicion. Had
the city, indeed, been carried in the night; had the massacre
already commenced; had all this labor and audacity been ex-
pended in vain? Suddenly a man was descried, wading breast-
high through the water from Lammen towards the fleet, while at
the same time, one solitary boy was seen to wave his cap from
the summit of the fort. After a moment of doubt, the happy
mystery was solved. The Spaniards had fled, panic struck, dur-
ing the darkness. Their position would still have enabled them,
with firmness, to frustrate the enterprise of the patriots, but the
hand of God, which had sent the ocean and the tempest to tlie
deliverance of Leyden, had struck her enemies with terror like-
wise. The lights which had been seen moving during the night
were the lanterns of the retreating Spaniards, and the boy who
was now waving his triumphant signal from the battlements had
alone witnessed the spectacle. So confident was he in the con-
clusion to which it led him, that he had volunteered at day-
break to go thither all alone. The magistrates, fearing a trap,
hesitated for a moment to believe the truth, which soon, how-
ever, became quite evident. Valdez, flying himself from Ley-
derdorp, had ordered Colonel Borgia to retire with all his troops
from Lammen. Thus, the Spaniards had retreated at the very
moment that an extraordinary accident had laid bare a whole side
of the city for their entrance. The noise of the wall, as it fell,
only inspired them with fresh alarm; for they believed that the
citizens had sallied forth in the darkness, to aid the advancing
flood in the work of destruction. All obstacles being now re-
moved, the fleet of Boisot swept by Lammen, and entered the
city on the morning of the 3d of October. Leyden was relieved.

The quays were lined with the famishing population, as the
fleet rowed through the canals, every human being who could
stand, coming forth to greet the preservers of the city. Bread
was thrown from every vessel among the crowd. The poor creat-
ures, who for two months had tasted no wholesome human foodf

JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY 33;

and who had literally been living within the jaws of death,
snatched eagerly the blessed gift, at last too liberally bestowed.
Many choked themselves to death, in the greediness with which
they devoured their bread; others became ill with the effects of
plenty thus suddenly succeeding starvation; — but these were iso-
lated cases, a repetition of which was prevented. The Admiral,
stepping ashore, was welcomed by the magistracy, and a solemn
procession was immediately formed. Magistrates and citizens,
wild Zealanders, emaciated burgher guards, sailors, soldiers,
women, children, — nearly every living person within the walls,
all repaired without delay to the great church, stout Admiral
Boisot leading the way. The starving and heroic city, which
had been so firm in its resistance to an earthly king, now bent
itself in humble gratitude before the King of kings. After pray-
ers, the whole vast congregation joined in the thanksgiving hymn.
Thousands of voices raised the song, but few were able to carry
it to its conclusion, for the universal emotion, deepened by the
music, became too full for utterance. The hymn was abruptly
suspended, while the multitude wept like children. This scene
of honest pathos terminated, the necessary measures for distrib-
uting the food and for relieving the sick were taken by the magis-
tracy. A note despatched to the Prince of Orange, was received
by him at two o'clock, as he sat in church at Delft. It was of a
somewhat different purport from that of the letter which he had
received early in the same day from Boisot; the letter in which
the Admiral had informed him that the success of the enterprise
depended, after all, upon the desperate assault upon a nearly
impregnable fort. The joy of the Prince may be easily imag-
ined, and so soon as the sermon was concluded, he handed the
letter just received to the minister, to be read to the congrega-
tion. Thus, all participated in his joy, and united with him in
thanksgiving.

[From The Rise of the Dutch Republic, part iv, chapter 2.]

HENRY DAVID THOREAU

[Henry David Thoreau was born in Concord, Mass., July 12, 1817, ^^^
died there May 6, 1862. His father, a pencil-maker, was the son of a Boston
merchant, who came of a Jersey family of French extraction, and had emi-
grated to America in 1 773. Both Thoreau's mother and grandmother were
Scotch. He was educated at Harvard College, where he was graduated in
1837. For a few years he taught school, and at times, in later years, he
lectured, but throughout his life he preferred to support himself largely by
the work of his hands. He was an expert pencil-maker, an excellent surveyor,
and by the intermittent exercise of these employments, as well as by farm
work, he earned enough to supply his simple wants and the needs of the
relatives who were at times dependent upon him. He was on intimate terms
with the little band of American transcendentalists, especially with Emerson,
at whose house he lived for some years, repaying the cost of his maintenance
by his labor. But wherever Thoreau lived, and whatever was his occupation,
his prevailing passion was a deep and constant delight in nature. Much of
his time was spent in the open air in pleasant companionship, or, more com-
monly still, alone. He was thoroughly familiar with the woods, fields, and
waters about his native place, and made longer journeys, on several occasions,
to Cape Cod, the Maine forests, and the White Mountains. His ruling pas-
sions — his love for simplicity and independence and his love for nature — were
perhaps most completely and naturally gratiBed when he spent more than two
years in a little hut which he built on Walden Pond near Concord, tilling a
small plot of ground, and depending for sustenance and for enjoyment almost
entirely on his own resources. Thoreau was a man whose personal views
and tenets were carried out to the point of eccentricity; but his life was
blameless and he was loved and respected by all who knew him.

Only two books of Thoreau's were published during his lifetime, A Week
on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1848) and Walden ; or Life in the Woods
(1854). He contributed, however, to several periodicals, and these essa3rs and
addresses, together with much matter from his journals and other papers, have
since been issued in the following volumes: Excursions (1863), The Maine
Woods (1863), Cape Cod (1865), Letters to Various Persons (1865), -^ ^<»«-
kee in Canada^ with Anti-Slavery and Reform Papers (1866), Early Spring
in Massachusetts (1881), Summer (1884), Winter {iSSS), Autumn (^i$g2)f
Familiar Letters (1894).]

There has been in America no such instance of posthumous
reputation as in the case of Thoreau. Poe and Whitman may

HENRY DAVID THOREAU 339

be claimed as parallels, but not justly. Poe even during his life
rode often on the very wave of success, until it subsided presently
beneath him, always to rise again, had he but made it possible.
Whitman gathered almost immediately a small but stanch band
of followers, who have held by him with such vehemence and
such flagrant imitation as to keep his name defiantly in evidence,
while perhaps enhancing the antagonism of his critics. Thoreau
could be egotistical enough, but was always high-minded ; all was
open and above board ; one could as soon conceive of self-advertis-
ing by a deer in the woods or an otter of the brook. He had no
organized clique of admirers, nor did he possess even what is
called personal charm — or at least only that piquant attraction
which he himself found in wild apples. As a rule, he kept men
at a distance, being busy with his own affairs. He left neither
wife nor children to attend to his memory ; and his sister seemed
for a time to repress the publication of his manuscripts. Yet this
plain, shy, retired student, who when thirty-two years old carried
the unsold edition of his first book upon his back to his attic cham-
ber ; who died at forty-four still unknown to the general public ; this
child of obscurity, who printed but two volumes during his life-
time, has had ten volumes of his writings published by others since
his death, while four biographies of him have been issued in
America (by Emerson, Channing, Sanborn, and Jones) besides
two in England (by Page and Salt).

Up to the time of his death he was unappreciated away from
home, and this was naturally also true of him at his place of resi-
dence, since such is the way of the world. Even Sir Walter Scott,
as we learn from the lately published letters of Mrs. Grant, was
not so much of a hero in Edinburgh as elsewhere. Thoreau
was born in Concord, Mass., and died there, and was therefore
more completely identified with that town than any of her other
celebrities. Yet when I was endeavoring, about 1870, to persuade
his sister to let me edit his journals, I invoked the aid of Judge
Hoar, then lord of the manor in Concord, who heard me patiently
through, and then said : " Whereunto? You have not established
the preliminary point. Why should any one wish to have Tho-
reau's journals printed ? " Ten years later four successive vol-
umes were made out of these journals by the late H. G. O. Blakei

340 AMERICAN PROSE

and it is a question whether the whole may not yet be published.
I hear from a local photograph dealer in Concord that the demand
for Thoreau*s pictures now exceeds that for any other local celeb-
rity. In the last sale catalogue of autographs which I have en-
countered I find a letter from Thoreau priced at $17.50, one from
Hawthorne valued at the same, one from Longfellow at $4.50
only, and one from Holmes at $3, each of tliese being guaranteed
as an especially good autograph letter. Now the value of such
memorials during a man's life affords but a slight test of his
permanent standing, — since almost any man's autograph can be
obtained for two postage stamps if the request be put with suffi-
cient ingenuity, — but when this financial standard can be safely
applied more than thirty years after a man's death, it comes
pretty near to a permanent fame.

It is true that Thoreau had Emerson as the editor of four of
his posthumous volumes ; but it is also true that he had against
him the strong voice of Lowell, whose following as a critic was
far greater than Emerson's. It will always remain a puzzle why
it was that Lowell, who had reviewed Thoreau's first book with
cordiality in the Massachusetts Quarterly Review and had said
to me afterwards, on hearing him compared to Izaak Walton,
" There is room for three or four Waltons in Thoreau," should
have written the really harsh attack on the latter which afterwards
appeared and in which the plain facts were unquestionably per-
verted. To transform Thoreau's two brief years of study and
observation at Walden, within two miles of his mother's door,
into a life-long renunciation of his fellow-men; to complain of
him as waiving all interest in public affairs when the great crisis
of John Brown's execution had found him far more awake to it than
Ix)well was, — this was only explainable by the lingering tradition
of that savage period of criticism, initiated by Poe, in whose
hands the thing became a tomahawk. As a matter of fact the
tomahawk had in this case its immediate effect; and the Eng-
lish editor and biographer of Thoreau has stated that Lowell's
criticism is to this day the great obstacle to the acceptance of
Thoreau's writings in England. It is to be remembered, how-
ever, that Thoreau was not wholly of English but partly of French
origin, and was, it might be added, of a sort of moral-Oriental

HENRY DAVID THOREAU 34I

or Puritan-Pagan temperament. With a literary feeling even
stronger than his feeling for nature — the proof of this being that
he could not, like many men, enjoy nature in silence — he put
his observations always on the level of literature, while Mr. Bur-
roughs, for instance, remains more upon the level of journalism.
It is to be doubted whether any author under such circum-
stances would have been received favorably in England ; just as the
poems of Emily Dickinson, which have shafts of profound scrutiny
that often suggest Thoreau, had an extraordinary success at home,
but fell hopelessly dead in England, so that the second volume was
never even published.

Lowell speaks of Thoreau as " indolent," but this is, as has been
said, like speaking of the indolence of a self-registering ther-
mometer. Lowell objects to him as pursuing " a seclusion that
keeps him in the public eye," whereas it was the public eye which
sought him ; it was almost as hard to persuade him to lecture
{crede expertd) as it was to get an audience for him when he had
consented. He never proclaimed the intrinsic superiority of the
wilderness, but pointed out better than any one else has done its
undesirableness as a residence, ranking it only as " a resource and
a background." " The partially cultivated country it is," he says,
" which has chiefly inspired, and will continue to inspire, the
strains of poets such as compose the mass of any literature."
" What is nature," he elsewhere says, " unless there is a human
life passing within it ? Many joys and many sorrows are the lights
and shadows in which she shines most beautiful." This is the real
and human Thoreau, who often whimsically veiled himself, but
was plainly enough seen by any careful observer. That he was
abrupt and repressive to bores and pedants, that he grudged his
time to them and frequently withdrew himself, was as true of him
as of Wordsworth or Tennyson. If they were allowed their pri-
vacy, though in the heart of England, an American who never left
his own broad continent might at least be allowed his privilege of
stepping out of doors. The Concord school-children never quar-
relled with this habit, for he took them out of doors with him and
taught them where the best whortleberries grew.

His scholarship, like his observation of nature, was secondary
to his function as poet and writer. Into both he carried the ele-

344 AMERICAN PROSE

man's whole life is taxed for the least thing well done. It is its
net result. Every sentence is the result of a long probation.
Where shall we look for standard English, but to the words of a
standard man ? The word which is best said came nearest to not
being spoken at all, for it is cousin to a deed which the speaker
could have better done. Nay, almost it must have taken the
place of a deed by some urgent necessity, even by some mis-
fortune, so that the truest writer will be some captive knight,
after all. And perhaps the fates had such a design, when, having
stored Raleigh so richly with the substance of life and experience,
they made him a fast prisoner, and compelled him to make his
words his deeds, and transfer to his expression the emphasis and
sincerity of his action.

Men have a respect for scholarship and learning greatly out of
proportion to the use they commonly serve. We are amused to
read how Ben Jonson engaged that the dull masks with which
the royal family and nobility were to be entertained, should be
" grounded upon antiquity and solid learning." Can there be any
greater reproach than an idle learning? Learn to split wood, at
least. The necessity of labor and conversation with many men
and things, to the scholar is rarely well remembered ; steady labor
with the hands, which engrosses the attention also, is unquestion-
ably the best method of removing palaver and sentimentality out
of one's style, both of speaking and writing. If he has worked
hard from morning till night, though he may have grieved that he
could not be watching the train of his thoughts during that time,
yet the few hasty lines which at evening record his day's expe-
rience will be more musical and true than his freest but idle fancy
could have furnished. Surely the writer is to address a world of
laborers, and such therefore must be his own discipline. He will
not idly dance at his work who has wood to cut and cord before
night-fall in the short days of winter ; but every stroke will be
husbanded, and ring soberly through the wood ; and so will the
strokes of that scholar's pen, which at evening record the story of
the day, ring soberly, yet cheerily, on the ear of the readei", long
after the echoes of his axe have died away. The scholar may be
sure that he writes the tougher truth for the calluses on his palms.
They give firmness to the sentence. Indeed, the mind never

HENR y DA VI D THOREA U 343

STYLE IN WRITING

A PERFECTLY healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For
the most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the thought ; as
if we could be satisfied with the dews of the morning or evening
without their colors, or the heavens without their azure. The
most attractive sentences are, perhaps, not the wisest, but the
surest and roundest. They are spoken firmly and conclusively, as
if the speaker had a right to know what he says, and if not wise,
they have at least been well learned. Sir Walter Raleigh might
well be studied, if only for the excellence of his style, for he is
remarkable in the midst of so many masters. There is a natural
emphasis in his style, Hke a man's tread, and a breathing space
between the sentences, which the best of modem writing does not
furnish. His chapters are like English parks, or say rather like a
western forest, where the larger growth keeps down the under-
wood, and one may ride on horseback through the openings. All
the distinguished writers of that period, possess a greater vigor and
naturalness than the more modern, — for it is allowed to slander
our own time, — and when we read a quotation from one of them
in the midst of a modern author, we seem to have come suddenly
upon a greener ground, a greater depth and strength of soil. It
is as if a green bough were laid across the page, and we are re-
freshed as by the sight of fresh grass in midwinter or early spring.
You have constantly the warrant of Hfe and experience in what
you read. The little that is said is eked out by implication of the
much that was done. The sentences are verdurous and bloom-
ing as evergreen and flowers, because they are rooted in fact and
experience, but our false and florid sentences have only the tints
of flowers without their sap or roots. All men are really most
attracted by the beauty of plain speech, and they even write in a
florid style in imitation of this. They prefer to be misunderstood
rather than to come short of its exuberance. Hussein Effendi
praised the epistolary style of Ibrahim Pasha to the French trav-
eler Botta, because of " the difficulty of understanding it ; there
was," he said, "but one person at Jidda, who was capable of
understanding and explaining the Pasha's correspondence." A

344 AMERICAN PROSE

Men have a respect for scholarship and learning greatly out of
proportion to the use they commonly serve. We are amused to
read how Ben Jonson engaged that the dull masks with which
the royal family and nobility were to be entertained, should be
" grounded upon antiquity and solid learning." Can there be any
greater reproach than an idle learning? Learn to split. wood, at
least. The necessity of labor and conversation with many men
and things, to the scholar is rarely well remembered ; steady labor
with the hands, which engrosses the attention also, is unquestion-
ably the best method of removing palaver and sentimentality out
of one's style, both of speaking and writing. If he has worked
hard from morning till night, though he may have grieved that he
could not be watching the train of his thoughts during that time,
yet the few hasty lines which at evening record his day's expe-
rience will be more musical and true than his freest but idle fancy
could have furnished. Surely the writer is to address a world of
laborers, and such therefore must be his own discipline. He will
not idly dance at his work who has wood to cut and cord before
night-fall in the short days of winter ; but every stroke will be
husbanded, and ring soberly through the wood ; and so will the
strokes of that scholar's pen, which at evening record the story of
the day, ring soberly, yet cheerily, on the ear of the readei", long
after the echoes of his axe have died away. The scholar may be
sure that he writes the tougher truth for the calluses on his psdms.
They give firmness to the sentence. Indeed, the mind ne^ei

HENRY DAVID THOREAU 345

makes a great and successful effort without a corresponding energy
of the body. We are often struck by the force and precision of
style to which hard-working men, unpracticed in writing, easily
attain, when required to make the effort. As if plainness and
vigor and sincerity, the ornaments of style, were better learned
on the farm and in the workshop than in the schools. The
sentences written by such rude hands are nervous and tough, like
hardened thongs, the sinews of the deer, or the roots of the pine.
As for the graces of expression, a great thought is never found in
a mean dress ; but though it proceed from the lips of the Woloffs,
the nine Muses and the three Graces will have conspired to clothe
it in fit phrase. Its education has always been liberal, and its
implied wit can endow a college. The scholar might frequently
emulate the propriety and emphasis of the farmer's call to his
team, and confess that if that were written it would surpass his
labored sentences. Whose are the truly labored sentences ? From
the weak and flimsy periods of the politician and literary man, we
are glad to turn even to the description of work, the simple record
of the month's labor in the farmer's almanac, to restore our tone
and spirits. A sentence should read as if its author, had he held
a plough instead of a pen, could have drawn a furrow deep and
straight to the end. The scholar requires hard and serious labor
to give an impetus to his thought. He will learn to grasp the pen
firmly so, and wield it gracefully and effectively, as an axe or a
sword. When we consider the weak and nerveless periods of
some literary men, who perchance in feet and inches come up to
the standard of their race, and are not deficient in girth also, we
are amazed at the immense sacrifice of thews and sinews. What !
these proportions, — these bones, — and this their work ! Hands
which could have felled an ox have hewed this fragile matter
which would not have tasked a lady's fingers ! Can this be a
stalwart man's work, who has a marrow in his back and a tendon
Achilles in his heel? They who set up the blocks of Stonehenge
did somewhat, if they only laid out their strength for once, and
stretched themselves.

[From A Week on the Concord and Merrimack River s^ 1 848, "Sunday."
The text is that of the first edition.]

346 AMERICAN PROSE

A VILLAGE FESTIVAL

As I pass along the streets of our village of Concord on the
day of our annual Cattle Show, when it usually happens that the
leaves of the elms and buttonwoods begin first to strew the ground
under the breath of the October wind, the lively spirits in their
sap seem to mount as high as any plow-boy's let loose that day;
and they lead my thoughts away to the rustling woods, where the
trees are preparing for their winter campaign. This autumnal
festival, when men are gathered in crowds in the streets as regu-
larly and by as natural a law as the leaves cluster and rustle by
the wayside, is naturally associated in my mind with the fall of
the year. The low of cattle in the streets sounds like a hoarse
symphony or running bass to the rustling of the leaves. The
wind goes hurrying down the country, gleaning every loose straw
that is left in the fields, while every farmer lad too appears to
scud before it, — having donned his best pea-jacket and pepper
and salt waistcoat, his unbent trousers, outstanding rigging of
duck, or kerseymere, or corduroy, and his furry hat withal, —
to country fairs and cattle shows, to that Rome among the vil-
lages where the treasures of the year are gathered. All the land
over they go leaping the fences with their tough idle palms,
which have never learned to hang by their sides, amid the low
of calves and the bleating of sheep, — Amos, Abner, Elnathan,
Elbridge, —

** From steep pine-bearing mountains to the plains."

I love these sons of earth every mother's son of them, with their
great hearty hearts rushing tumultuously in herds from spectacle
to spectacle, as if fearful lest there should not be time between
sun and sun to see them all, and the sun does not wait more than
in haying- time.

" Wise Nature's darlings, they live in the world
Perplexing not themselves how it is hurled."

Running hither and thither with appetite for the coarse pastimes
of the day, now with boisterous speed at the heels of the inspired

HENRY DAVID THOREAU 347

negto from whose larynx the melodies of all Congo and Guinea
coast have broke loose into our streets; now to see the procession
of a hundred yoke of oxen, all as august and grave as Osiris, or
the droves of neat cattle and milch cows as unspotted as Isis or
lo. Such as had no love for Nature

" at all,
Came lovers home from this great festival."

They may bring their fattest cattle and richest fruits to the fair,
but they are all eclipsed by the show of men. These are stirring
autumn days, when men sweep by in crowds, amid the rustle of
leaves, like migrating finches; this is the true harvest of the year,
when the air is but the breath of men, and the rustling of leaves
is as the trampling of the crowd. We read now-a-days of the
ancient festivals, games, and processions of the Greeks and Etrus-
cans with a little incredulity, or at least with little sympathy; but
how natural and irrepressible in every people is some hearty and
palpable greeting of Nature. The Corybantes, the Bacchantes,
the rude primitive tragedians with their procession and goat-
song, and the whole paraphernalia of the Panathensea, which
appear so antiquated and peculiar, have their parallel now. The
husbandman is always a better Greek than the scholar is prepared
to appreciate, and the old custom still survives, while antiqua-
rians and scholars grow gray in commemorating it. The farmers
crowd to the fair to-day in obedience to the same ancient law,
which Solon or Lycurgus did not enact, as naturally as bees swarm
and follow their queen.

It is worth the while to see the country's people, how they pour
into the town, the sober farmer folk, now all agog, their very shirt
and coat collars pointing forward, — collars so broad as if they
had put their shirts on wrong end upward, for the fashions always
tend to superfluity, — and with an unusual springiness in their
gait, jabbering earnestly to one another. The more supple vaga-
bond, too, is sure to appear on the least rumor of such a gather-
ing, and the next day to disappear, and go into his hole like the
seventeen-year locust, in an ever shabby coat, though finer than
the farmer's best, yet never dressed; come to see the sport, and
have a hand in what is going, — to know "what's the row," if

348 AMERICAN PROSE

there is any; to be where some men are drunk, some horses race,
some cockerels fight; anxious to be shaking props under a table,
and above all to see the "striped pig." He certainly is the
creature of the occasion. He empties both his pockets and his
character into the stream, and swims in such a day. He dearly
loves the social slush. There is no reserve of soberness in him.
I love to see the herd of men feeding heartily on coarse and
succulent pleasures, as cattle oh the husks and stalks of vege-
tables. Though there are many crooked and crabbed specimens
of humanity among them, run all to thorn and rind, and crowded
out of shape by adverse circumstances, like the third chestnut in
the burr, so that you wonder to see some heads wear a whole
hat, yet fear not that the race will fail or waver in them; like
the crabs which grow in hedges, they furnish the stocks of sweet
and thrifty fruits still. Thus is nature recruited from age to age,
while the fair and palatable varieties die out, and have their
period. This is that mankind. How cheap must be the mate-
rial of which so many men are made.

[From A Week on the Concord^ etc., " Friday." The text is that of the first

edition.]

PERSONAL AIMS

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to
front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn
what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that
I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living
is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was
quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the mar-
row of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout
all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to
drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and,
if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine
meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it
were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a
true account of it in my next excursion. For most men, it ap-
pears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is

HENRY DAVID THOREAU 349

of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that
it is the chief end of man here to " glorify God and enjoy him
forever."

Still we live meanly, like ants; though the fable tells us that
we were long ago changed into men; like pygmies we fight with
cranes; it is error upon error, and clout upon clout, and our best
virtue has for its occasion a superfluous and evitable wretched-
ness. Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has
hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme
cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity,
simplicity, simplicity ! I say, let your affairs be as two or three,
and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half
a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail. In the
midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds
and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be
allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and
go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning,
and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Sim-
plify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary
eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other
things in proportion. Our life is like a German Confederacy,
made up of petty states, with its boundary forever fluctuating, so
that even a German cannot tell you how it is bounded at any
moment. The nation itself, with all its so-called internal im-
provements, which by the way are all external and superficial, is
just such an unwieldy and overgrown establishment, cluttered
with furniture and tripped up by its own traps, ruined by luxury
and heedless expense, by want of calculation and a worthy aim,
as the million households in the land; and the only cure for it as
for them is in a rigid economy, a stern and more than Spartan
simplicity of life and elevation of purpose. It lives too fast.
Men think that it is essential that the Nation have commerce,
and export ice, and talk through a telegraph, and ride thirty
miles an hour, without a doubt, whether they do or not; but
whether we should live like baboons or like men, is a little uncer-
tain. If we do not get out sleepers, and forge rails, and devote
days and nights to the work, but go to tinkering upon our lives to
improve them, who will build railroads? And if railroads are

350 AMERICAN PROSE

not built, how shall we get to heaven in season? But if we stay
at home and mind our business, who will want railroads? We
do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us. Did you ever
think what those sleepers are that underlie the railroad? Each
one is a man, an Irishman, or a Yankee man. The rails are laid
on them, and they are covered with sand, and the cars run
smoothly over them. They are sound sleepers, I assure you.
And every few years a new lot is laid down and run over; so
that, if some have the pleasure of riding on a rail, others have
the misfortune to be ridden upon. And when they run over a
man that is walking in his sleep, a supernumerary sleeper in the
wrong position, and wake him up, they suddenly stop the cars,
and make a hue and cry about it, as if this were an exception.
I am glad to know that it takes a gang of men for every five miles
to keep the sleepers down and level in their beds as it is, for
this is a sign that they may sometime get up again.

Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? We
are determined to be starved before we are hungry. Men say
that a stitch in time saves nine, and so they take a thousand
stitches to-day to save nine to-morrow. As for work^ we haven't
any of any consequence. We have the Saint Vitus* dance, and
cannot possibly keep our heads still. If I should only give a
few pulls at the parish bell-rope, as for a fire, that is, without
setting the bell, there is hardly a man on his farm in the outskirts
of Concord, notwithstanding that press of engagements which was
his excuse so many times this morning, nor a boy, nor a woman,
I might almost say, but would forsake all and follow that sound,
not mainly to save property from the flames, but, if we will con-
fess the truth, much more to see it burn, since burn it must,
and we, be it known, did not set it on fire, — or to see it put out,
and have a hand in it, if that is done as handsomely; yes, even
if it were the parish church itself. Hardly a man takes a half
hour's nap after dinner, but whefa he wakes he holds up his head
and asks, "What's the news?" as if the rest of mankind had
stood his sentinels. Some give directions to be waked every half
hour, doubtless for no other purpose; and then, to pay for it,
they tell what they have dreamed. After a night's sleep the news
is as indispensable as the breakfast. " Pray tell me anything new

HENRY DAVID THOREAU 35 1

that has happened to a man anywhere on this globe," — and he
reads it over his coffee and rolls, that a man has had his eyes
gouged out this morning on the VVachito River; never dreaming
the while that he lives in the dark unfathomed mammoth cave of
this world, and has but the rudiment of an eye himself.

[From Walden ; or. Life in the Woods ^ 1854, chapter 2. The text of this
and succeeding selections is that of the first edition.]

SOUNDS AT EVENING

Now that the cars are gone by and all the restless world with
them, and the fishes in the pond no longer feel their rumbling, I
am more alone than ever. For the rest of the long afternoon,
perhaps, my meditations are interrupted only by the faint rattle
of a carriage or team along the distant highway.

Sometimes, on Sundays, I heard the bells, the Lincoln, Acton,
Bedford, or Concord bell, when the wind was favorable, a faint,
sweet, and, as it were, natural melody, worth importing into the
wilderness. At a sufficient distance over the woods this sound
acquires a certain vibratory hum, as if the pine needles in the
horizon were the strings of a harp which it swept. All sound
heard at the greatest possible distance produces one and the
same effect, a vibration of the universal lyre, just as the inter-
vening atmosphere makes a distant ridge of earth interesting to
our eyes by the azure tint it imparts to it. There came to me in
this case a melody which the air had strained, and which had
conversed with every leaf and needle of the wood, that portion
of the sound which the elements had taken up and modulated
and echoed from vale to vale. The echo is, to some extent, an
original sound, and therein is the magic and charm of it. It is
not merely a repetition of what was worth repeating in the bell,
but partly the voice of the wood; the same trivial words and
notes sung by a wood-nymph.

At evening, the distant lowing of some cow in the horizon
beyond the woods sounded sweet and melodious, and at first I
would mistake it for the voices of certain minstrels by whom I

352 AMERICAN PROSE

was sometimes serenaded, who might be straying over hill and
dale; but soon I was not unpleasantly disappointed when it was
prolonged into the cheap and natural music of the cow. I do
not mean to be satirical, but to express my appreciation of those
youths' singing, when I state that I perceived clearly that it was
akin to the music of the cow, and they were at length one articu-
lation of Nature.

Regularly at half past seven, in one part of the summer, after
the evening train had gone by, the whippoorwills chanted their
vespers for half an hour, sitting on a stump by my door, or upon
the ridge-pole of the house. They would begin to sing almost
with as much precision as a clock, within five minutes of a par-
ticular time, referred to the setting of the sun, every evening. I
had a rare opportunity to become acquainted with their habits.
Sometimes I heard four or five at once in different parts of the
wood, by accident one a bar behind another, and so near me that
I distinguished not only the cluck after each note, but often that
singular buzzing sound like a fly in a spider's web, only propor-
tionally louder. Sometimes one would circle round and round
me in the woods a few feet distant as if tethered by a string,
when probably I was near its eggs. They sang at intervals
throughout the night, and were again as musical as ever just
before and about dawn.

When other birds are still the screech owls take up the strain,
like mourning women their ancient u-lu-lu. Their dismal scream
is truly Ben Jonsonian. Wise midnight hags! It is no honest
and blunt tu-whit tu-who of the poets, but, without jesting, a
most solemn graveyard ditty, the mutual consolations of suicide
lovers remembering the pangs and the delights of supernal love
in the infernal groves. Yet I love to hear their wailing, their
doleful responses, trilled along the woodside; reminding me
sometimes of music and singing birds; as if it were the dark and
tearful side of music, the regrets and sighs that would fain be
sung. They are the spirits, the low spirits and melancholy fore-
bodings, of fallen souls that once in human shape night- walked
the earth and did the deeds of darkness, now expiating their sins
with their wailing hymns or threnodies in the scenery of their
transgressions. They give me a new sense of the variety and ca-

HENRY DAVID THOREAU 353

pacity of that nature which is our common dwelling. Oh-o-o-o-o
that I never had been bor-r-r-r-n ! sighs one on this side of the
pond, 4nd circles with the restlessness of despair to some new
perch on the gray oaks. Then — that I never had been bor-r-r-r-n!
echoes another on the farther side with tremulous sincerity, and
— bor-r-r-r-n / comes faintly from far in the Lincoln woods.

[From IValden, chapter 4, " Sounds."]

SOLITUDE

f his is a delicious evening, when the whole body is one sense,
and imbibes delight through every pore. I go and come with a
strange liberty in Nature, a part of herself. As I walk along the
stony shore of the pond in my shirt sleeves, though it is cool as
well as cloudy and windy, and I see nothing special to attract
me, all the elements are unusually congenial to me. The bull-
frogs trump to usher in the night, and the note of the whippoor-
will is borne on the rippling wind from over the water. Sympathy
with the fluttering alder and poplar leaves almost takes away my
breath; yet, like the lake, my serenity is rippled but not ruffled.
These small waves raised by the evening wind are as remote from
storm as the smooth reflecting surface. Though it is now dark,
the wind still blows and roars in the wood, the waves still dash,
and some creatures lull the rest with their notes. The repose is
never complete. The wildest animals do not repose, but seek
their prey now; the fox, and skunk, and rabbit, now roam the
fields and woods without fear. They are Nature's watchmen, —
links which connect the days of animated life.

When I return to my house I find that visitors have been there
and left their cards, either a bunch of flowers, or a wreath of
evergreen, or a name in pencil on a yellow walnut leaf or a chip.
They who come rarely to jthe woods take some little piece of the
forest into their hands to play with by the way, which they leave,
either intentionally or accidentally. One has peeled a willow
wand, woven it into a ring, and dropped it on my table. I could
always tell if visitors had called in my absence, either by the
bended twigs or grass, or the print of their shoes, and generally

354 AMERICAN PROSE

of what sex or age or quality they were by some slight trace left,
as a flower dropped, or a bunch of grass plucked and thrown
away, even as far off as the railroad, half a mile distant, or by
the lingering odor of a cigar or pipe. Nay, I was frequently
notified of the passage of a traveller along the highway sixty
rods off by the scent of his pipe.

There is commonly sufficient space about us. Our horizon is
never quite at our elbows. The thick wood is not just at our
door, nor .the pond, but somewhat is always clearing, familiar
and worn by us, appropriated and fenced in some way, and re-
claimed from Nature. For what reason have I this vast range
and circuit, some square miles of unfrequented forest, for my
privacy, abandoned to me by men? My nearest neighbor is a
mile distant, and no house is visible from any place but the hill-
tops within half a mile of my own. I have my horizon bounded
by woods all to myself; a distant view of the railroad where it
touches the pond on the one hand, and of the fence which skirts
the woodland road on the other. But for the most part it is as
solitary where I live as on the prairies. It is as much Asia or
Africa as New England. I have, as it were, my own sun and
moon and stars, and a little world all to myself. At night there
was never a traveller passed my house, or knockied at my door,
more than if I were the first or last man; unless it were in the
spring, when at long intervals some came from the village to fish
for pouts, — they plainly fished much more in the Walden Pond
of their own natures, and baited their hooks with darkness, — but
they soon retreated, usually with light baskets, and left "the
world to darkness and to me," and the black kernel of the night
was never profaned by any human neighborhood. I believe that
men are generally still a little afraid of the dark, though the
witches are all hung, and Christianity and candles have been
introduced.

Yet I experienced sometimes that the most sweet and tender,
the most innocent and encouraging society may be found in any
natural object, even for the poor misanthrope and most melan-
choly man. There can be no very black melancholy to him who
lives in the midst of Nature and has his senses still. There was
never yet such a storm but it was ^olian music to a healthy and

HENRY DAVID THOREAU 355

innocent ear. Nothing can rightly compel a simple and brave
man to a vulgar sadness. While I enjoy the friendship of the
seasons I trust that nothing can make life a burden to me. The
gentle rain which waters my beans and keeps me in the house to-
day is not drear and melancholy, but good for me too. Though
it prevents my hoeing them, it is of far more worth than my
hoeing. If it should continue so long as to cause the seeds to
rot in the ground and destroy the potatoes in the lowlands, it
would still be good for the grass on the uplands, and, being good
for the grass, it would be good for me. Sometimes, when I com-
pare myself with other men, it seems as if I were more favored
by the gods than they, beyond any deserts that I am conscious
of; as if I had a warrant and surety at their hands which my fel-
lows have not, and were especially guided and guarded. I do
not flatter myself, but if it be possible they flatter me. I have
never felt lonesome, or in the least oppressed by a sense of soli-
tude, but once, and that was a few weeks after I came to the
woods, when, for an hour, I doubted if the near neighborhood of
man was not essential to a serene and healthy life. To be alone
was something unpleasant. But I was at the same time conscious
of a slight insanity in my mood, and seemed to foresee my re-
covery. In the midst of a gentle rain while these thoughts pre-
vailed, I was suddenly sensible of such sweet and beneficent
society in Nature, in the very pattering of the drops, and in
every sound and sight around my house, an infinite and unac-
countable friendliness all at once like an atmosphere sustaining
me, as made the fancied advantages of human neighborhood
insignificant, and I have never thought of them since. Every
little pine needle expanded and swelled with sympathy and be-
friended me. I was so distinctly made aware of the presence of
something kindred to me, even in scenes which we are accus-
tomed to call wild and dreary, and also that the nearest of blood
to me and humanest was not a person nor a villager, that I
thought no place could ever be strange to me again.

[From Walden, chapter 5, " Solitude."]

3S6 AMERICAN PROSE

IMMORTALITY

How long shall we sit in our porticoes practising idle and musty
virtues, which any work. would make impertinent? As if one
were to begin the day with long-suffering, and hire a man to hoe
his potatoes; and in the afternoon go forth to practise Christian
meekness and charity with goodness aforethought! Consider the
China pride and stagnant self-complacency of mankind. This
generation inclines a little to congratulate itself on being the last
of an illustrious line; and in Boston and London and Paris and
Rome, thinking of its long descent, it speaks of its progress in
art and science and literature with satisfaction. There are the
Records of the Philosophical Societies, and the public Eulogies
of Great Men I It is the good Adam contemplating his own vir-
tue. "Yes, we have done great deeds, and sung divine songs,
which shall never die," — that is, as long as we can remember
them. The learned societies and great men of Assyria, — where
are they? What youthful philosophers and experimentalists we
are ! There is not one of my readers who has yet lived a whole
human life. These may be but the spring months in the life of
the race. If we have had the seven years' itch, we have not seen
the seventeen-year locust yet in Concord. We are acquainted
with a mere pellicle of the globe on which we live. Most have
not delved six feet beneath the surface, nor leaped as many above
it. We know not where we are. Beside, we are sound asleep
nearly half our time. Yet we esteem ourselves wise, and have an
established order on the surface. Truly, we are deep thinkers, we
are ambitious spirits ! As I stand over the insect crawling amid
the pine needles on the forest floor, and endeavoring to conceal
itself from my sight, and ask myself why it will cherish those
humble thoughts, and hide its head from me who might, perhaps,
be its benefactor, and impart to its race some cheering informa-
tion, I am reminded of the greater Benefactor and Intelligence
that stands over me the human insect.

There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and
yet we tolerate incredible dulness. I need only suggest what
kind of sermons are still listened to in the most enlightened

HENRY DAVID THOREAU 357

countries. There are such words as joy and sorrow, but they are
only the burden of a psalm, sung with a nasal twang, while we
believe in the ordinary and mean. We think that we can change
bur clothes only. It is said that the British Empire is very large
and respectable, and that the United States are a first-rate power.
We do not believe that a tide rises and falls behind every man
which can float the British Empire like a chip, if he should ever
harbor it in his mind. Who knows what sort of seventeen-year
locust will next come out of the ground? The government of
the world I live in was not framed, like that of Britain, in after-
dinner conversations over the wine.

The life in us is like the water in the river. It may rise this
year higher than man has ever known it, and flood the parched
uplands; even this may be the eventful year, which will drown
out all our muskrats. It was not always dry land where we dwell.
I see far inland the banks which the stream anciently washed,
before science began to record its freshets. Every one has
heard the story which has gone the rounds of New England, of
a strong and beautiful bug which came out of the dry leaf of an
old table of apple-tree wood, which had stood in a farmer's
kitchen for sixty years, first in Connecticut, and afterward in
Massachusetts, — from an tgg deposited in the living tree many
years earlier still, as appeared by counting the annual layers
beyond it; which was heard gnawing out for several weeks,
hatched perchance by the heat of an urn; Who does not feel his
faith in a resurrection and immortality strengthened by hearing
of this? Who knows what beautiful and winged life, whose egg
has been buried for ages under many concentric layers of wooden-
ness in the dead dry life of society, deposited at first in the
alburnum of the green and living tree, which has been gradually
converted into the semblance of its well-seasoned tomb, — heard
perchance gnawing out now for years by the astonished family of
man, as they sat round the festive board, — may unexpectedly
come forth from amidst society's most trivial and handselled
furniture, to enjoy its perfect summer life at lastl

[From Waldetty " Conclusion.*']

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

[James Russell Lx)well was born in the Lowell homestead, Elmwood, in
Cambridge, Mass., Feb. 22, 1 81 9, and died there Aug. 12, 1891. He came
from a distinguished New England family. He was educated at Harvard
College, where he graduated in 1838. On leaving college he began the study
of law and was admitted to the bar in 1840, but never practised hb profession.
Genius and taste alike turned him to literature. In 1843 ^^ ^^ ^^ editor
and one of the founders of the short-lived periodical, The^Pioneer^ which took
a higher stand than any magazine of the time. He contributed to other
periodicals, but he became widely known in 1848 through the ringing satire
of the Biglow Papers^ in which his convictions of the wrong of slavery and
the crime of the Mexican War found ardent and effective expression; and
also by his Fable for Critics and Sir Launfal. In 1 85 1 he made his first
visit to Europe, and in 1855, after his appointment to succeed Longfellow as
Smith professor of the French and Spanish languages and literatures and
of belles-lettres at Harvard College, a second visit of several years, during
which he laid the foundations of his wide knowledge of the Romance lan-
guages and literatures. For twenty years his time was absorbed by his aca-
demic duties, by his share in the editorship of the AtlatiHc Monthly (1857), and
the North American Review (1863-72), and by the writing of many of his best
essays. In 1872, however, he again spent a year in Europe, and in 1877 ^^
virtually severed his connections with Harvard College by his acceptance of an
appointment as minister to Spain. In 1880 he was transferred to England,
where he served until 1885. In 1887 he paid a last visit to England. Oxford
conferred on him the degree of D.C.L. in 1873, and Cambridge that of LL.D.
in 1874. Lowell served his country well, not only as a diplomat, an editor, a
patriot poet, and an essayist, but as a teacher, and through his continuation at
Harvard College of the studies in European languages and literatures begun
by Ticknor and Longfellow, the cause of learning and culture throughont the
land received a distinct impetus.

Much of Lowell's best work in prose was contributed to various periodicals.
The names and dates of the volumes containing his published prose work are
as follows: Conversations on Some of the Old Poets (1845), Fii^^^de Travels
(1864), Among my Books (first series, 1870; second series, 1876), My Study
Windows (1871), Democracy and Other Addresses (1886), Political Essays
(1888), Latest Literary Essays and Addresses (1891), The Old En^isk Dram-
atists (1892). His Letter Sy edited by C. E. Norton, appeared in 1883.]

358

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 359

Among American men of letters Lowell stands conspicuous alike
for variety of natural gift and breadth of culture. Poet, wit,
humorist, scholar, critic, essayist, professor, diplomatist, in each
capacity he exhibited an exceUence which served as warrant that
had he limited himself to a single art, he might easily have attained
to the highest distinction in its pursuit. But the very multiplicity
of his endowments interfered with the complete expression of any
one of them. His talents hampered his genius. A lifetime is long
enough for most men to make full use of their possessions. But
so ample were his resources that he seemed to need a secular term
in which to fulfil the service which they were capable of rendering.
In all that he did he was troubled, not by lack but by superfluity
of means. Masterly as was his performance in many fields, his
seventy years were but as a long youth, a period of preparation
for the completely disciplined exercise of his natural powers. He
was never content with his own achievements, but, with unex-
hausted ardor and unwearied industry, he continued to the end
of life preparing himself for the work in which his genius should
exhibit the full sweep of its wing.

Yet in his poetry and in his prose, however much there may be
that is deciduous, there is much of perennial quality which " gives
it a title to rank as literature in the highest sense." His best work
is replete with an undying vitality ; it is the expression of a spirit
of perpetual contemporaneousness. His own words in speaking
of the classics are largely applicable to himself: " Their vitality
is the vitality not of one or another blood or tongue, but of human
nature ; their truth is not topical and transitory, but of universal
acceptation ; and thus all great authors seem the coevals not only
of each Other, but of whoever reads them, growing wiser with him
as he grows wise, and unlocking; to him one secret after another
as his own life and experience give him the key, but on no other
conditior^, Their meaning is absolute, not conditional; it is a
property of theirs quite irrespective of manners or creed ; for the
highest culture, the development of the individual by observa-
tion, reflection, and study leads to one result, whether in Athens
or in London " or on the banks of the Charles.

Lowell was fortunate in his birth and his early training. The time
was the happiest period of the historic life of New England. The

360 AMERICAN PROSE

community was one in which homogeneousness of blood, common
traditions, simplicity of customs, wide diffusion of comfort and of
culture, an unusual equality of condition, a general disposition to
individual independence and mutual reliance, all combined to pro-
mote a spirit of hopefulness, confidence, and sympathy, such as
has rarely existed among men. For a youth of genius it was a
fortunate society in which he grew up. There were few adventi-
tious difficulties to be struggled with ; there was little to pervert
the natural course of his powers ; there was learning enough to be
had for their due cultivation ; the moral atmosphere was healthy.
The influence of such conditions is manifest not only in Lowell's
writings, but in those of his contemporaries as well : it gave its
quality to the wisdom of Emerson, to the poetry of Longfellow ;
and, in the work of these and other men their fellows, the salutary
influence is perpetuated for the benefit of later generations. These
men in their writings, and in their lives, gave expression and form
to the true ideals of American democracy.

The first of Lowell's prose works, Conversations on Some of the
Old Poets ^ was published in 1845, when.he was but twenty-six years
old, " standing as yet only in the outer porch of life." Alike in
substance and in form it exhibits the youthfulness of its author, but
it is the work of a youth already capable of such things as betoken
great achievements to come. There is in it the evidence of native
force of mind, of poetic temperament, of imaginative insight and
critical discrimination, as well as of wide reading and capacity of
so assimilating the thought of others as to make it the nutriment
of originality of genius. But there is also in it something of the
perfervid zeal of youth, its disposition to rhetorical exuberance,
its exclusiveness of taste, and its subjection to the influences of
favorite writers. Lowell rapidly outgrew these defects, they be-
came distasteful to him, and in later years he refrained from
reprinting the little book which, in spite of its containing much
that remained characteristic of its author, was the work of a writer
different in some important respects from what he had become.
In the Address to the Reader with which it begins there is, how-
ever, a passage which is of interest in its bearing on the whole of
Lowell's literary work. " For the minor faults of the book," said
the young author, "the hurry with which it has been prepared must

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 36 1

plead in extenuation, since it was in process of writing and printing
at the same time, so that I could never estimate its proportions as
a whole." The same words might have been repeated as an intro-
duction to much, indeed to the greater part, of his writing at every
period of his life. Poem or essay as it might be, the expression
of life- long sentiment, or of years of study and reflection, it was
written hastily. The pages flew from the study to the press. Low-
ell's faculties were so ready at command, were so trained and
disciplined by continual service, that he could trust them to per-
form efficiently the bidding of his genius whatever it might require.
But even the most consummate master cannot always give perfec-
tion of form to work in his first shaping of it. The mentis cetemce
forma is not to be rendered in its completeness at the first effort.
But he was impatient of revision. The poetic impulse was stronger
in him than the artistic. He could not bring himself to follow
Donne's example, and " cribrate, recribrate, and postcribrate."
The very abundance of his genius was a temptation which led
him to care little for what lay behind him already accomplished,
in comparison with the allurement of what still lay before him to
be done. And he had, indeed, such ample reason for confidence
in his own powers, that the lover of his work is left with little to
desire but that the gods had added to his other gifts the disposi-
tion of perfecting.

At its best Lowell's prose style is that of a master of the English
tongue. It is full of life and masculine vigor. In its large, clear,
and easy flow it is the expression of a strong, rich, and well-nurt-
ured mind, of a nature generous and sweet, and of a poetic tem-
perament modified by the tastes of a scholar and of a student
of nature. The resources of the language are at his command.
There is no conscious effort in his sentences, no mere rhetorical
display, but they possess a natural and often noble modulation.
The form which he gives to his thought seldom makes too great
a claim on the attention of the reader ; his diction is in general
simple and direct, full without redundancy, word and phrase hap-
pily coalescing with the thought. There is much in his style of
what he called " that happy spontaneousness which delights us in
the best writers," and which, seeming to partake of the element
of luck, is evidence of the highest culture. Now and then his

362 AMERICAN PROSE

vivacity of fancy leads him beyond the bounds of a chastened
taste, and he drops the wand of the magician to play for a brie/
instant with the lath of the jester. But the fulness of life is less
often manifest in superabundance of vivacity than in happy illus-
tration, vivid metaphor, imaginative simile, or wise reflection.

Of all his prose work that which most fully displays his genius
is, perhaps, the body of his essays on the EngUsh poets and drama-
tists. There are no literary studies in the language more instinct
with the true spirit of critical appreciation, none which may serve
better as an introduction not merely to the work of special poets,
but to English poetry in general. For, in treating of the poets
from Spenser to Wordsworth, the whole field is traversed along the
main road leading through it, and many of its by-paths are inci-
dentally explored. The treatment is throughout large, liberal, and
just, distinguished by poetic insight, scholarly urbanity, and mature
reflection.

Yet if his native genius finds its freest expression in these liter-
ary essays, his character is perhaps manifested even more impres-
sively in his political writings. The spirit that pervades them is
that of the wise and practical idealist, who knows that the worth
of a nation and the strength of its institutions depend upon the
nature of the ideas which they embody and represent, and that
material prosperity is in the long run dependent upon the suprem-
acy of moral principles. The vigorous reasoning, the large
knowledge of history, the wit, the clearness of statement, the
strong, right sentiment of these essays and speeches give them a
high rank in political literature.

LowelPs place is secure among the great writers of English
prose ; for it is not presumptuous to prophesy that much of his
work will be read by future generations, not merely for its impor-
tance in the history of American letters, but for its own sake, its
wisdom and its charm, its abiding classic quality.

Charles Euot Norton

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 363

THE YANKEE CHARACTER

There are two things upon which it should seem fitting to di-
late somewhat more largely in this place, — the Yankee character
and the Yankee dialect. And, first, of the Yankee character,
which has wanted neither open maligners, nor even more danger-
ous enemies in the persons of those unskilful painters who have
given to it that hardness, angularity, and want of proper perspec-
tive, which, in truth, belonged, not to their subject, but to their
own niggard and unskilful pencil.

New England was not so much the colony of a mother country,
as a Hagar driven forth into the wilderness. The little self-
exiled band which came hither in 1620 came, not to seek gold,
but to found a democracy. They came that they might have the
privileges to work and pray, to sit upon hard benches and listen
to painful preachers as long as they would, yea, even unto thirty-
seventhly, if the spirit so willed it. And surely if the Greek
might boast his Thermopylae, where three hundred men fell re-
sisting the Persian, we may well be proud of our Plymouth Rock,
where a handful of men, women, and children not merely faced,
but vanquished, winter, famine, the wilderness, and the yet more
invincible storge that drew them back to the green island far
away. These found no lotus growing upon the surly shore, the
taste of which could make them forget their little native Ithaca;
nor were they so wanting to themselves in faith as to burn their
ship, but could see the fair west-wind belly the homeward sail,
and then turn unrepining to grapple with the terrible Unknown.

As Want was the prime foe these hardy exodists had to fortress
themselves against, so it is little wonder if that traditional feud
be long in wearing out of the stock. The wounds of the old
warfare were long ahealing, and an east-wind of hard times puts
a new ache in every one of them. Thrift was the first lesson in
their horn-book, pointed out, letter after letter, by the lean finger
of the hard schoolmaster. Necessity. Neither were those plump,
rosy-gilled Englishmen that came hither, but a hard-faced, atra-
bilious, earnest-eyed race, stiff from long wrestling with the Lord
in prayer, and who had taught Satan to dread the new Puritan

364 AMERICAN PROSE

hug. Add two hundred years' influence of soil, climate, and
exposure, with its necessary result of idiosyncrasies, and we
have the present Yankee, full of expedients, half-master of all
trades, inventive in all but the beautiful, full of shifts, not yet
capable of comfort, armed at all points against the old enemy
Hunger, longanimous, good at patching, not so careful for what
is best as for what will do^ with a clasp to his purse and a "button
to his pocket, not skilled to build against Time, as in old coun-
tries, but against sore-pressing Need, accustomed to move the
world with no ttov (jt^ but his own two feet, and no lever but his
own long forecast. A strange hybrid, indeed, did circumstance
beget, here in the New World, upon the old Puritan stock, and
the earth never before saw such mystic-practicalism, such niggard-
geniality, such calculating-fanaticism, such cast-iron-enthusiasm,
such unwilling-humor, such close-fisted-generosity. This new
Grceculus esuriens will make a living out of anything. He will
invent new trades as well as tools. His brain is his capital, and
he will get education at all risks. Put him on Juan Fernandez,
and he would make a spelling-book first, and a salt-pan after-
ward. In cesium, jusseris, ibit, — or the other way either, — it
is all one, so anything is to be got by it. Yet, after all, thin,
speculative Jonathan is more like the Englishman of two centu-
ries ago than John Bull himself is. He has lost somewhat in
solidity, has become fluent and adaptable, but more of the origi-
nal groundwork of character remains. He feels more at home
with Fulke Greville, Herbert of Cherbury, Quarles, George
Herbert, and Browne, than with his modern English cousins.
He is nearer than John, but by at least a hundred years, to Naseby,
Marston Moor, Worcester, and the time when, if ever, there
were true Englishmen. John Bull has suffered the idea of the
Invisible to be very much fattened out of him. Jonathan is con-
scious still that he lives in the world of the Unseen as well as the
Seen. To move John you must make your fulcrum of solid beef
and pudding; an abstract idea will do for Jonathan.

[ The Biglow Papers, First Series, 1848, " Introduction." The text is that
of the first edition. ]

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 365

CAMBRIDGE THIRTY YEARS AGO

A MEMOIR ADDRESSED TO THE EDELMANN STORG IN ROME

In those quiet old winter evenings, around our Roman fireside,
it was not seldom, my dear Storg, that we talked of the advantages
of travel, and in speeches not so long that our cigars would forget
their fire (the measure of just conversation) debated the compar-
ative advantages of the Old and the New Worlds. You will remem-
ber how serenely I bore the imputation of provincialism, while I
asserted that those advantages were reciprocal; that an orbed and
balanced life would revolve between the Old and the New as its
opposite, but not antagonistic poles, the true equator lying some-
where midway between them. I asserted also that there were
two epochs at which a man might travel, — before twenty, for
pure enjoyment, and after thirty, for instruction. At twenty, the
eye is sufficiently delighted with merely seeing; new things are
pleasant only because they are not old; and we take everything
heartily and naturally in the right way, events being always
like knives, which either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by
the blade or the handle. After thirty, we carry with us our scales
with lawful weights stamped by experience, and our chemical
tests acquired by study, with which to ponder and assay all arts,
and institutions, and manners, and to ascertain either their abso-
lute worth, or their merely relative value to ourselves. On the
whole, I declared myself in favor of the after-thirty method, —
was it partly (so difficult is it to distinguish between opinions
and personalities) because I had tried it myself, though with
scales so imperfect and tests so inadequate? Perhaps so, but
more because I held that a man should have travelled thoroughly
round himself and the great terra incognita just outside and inside
his own threshold, before he undertook voyages of discovery to
other worlds. Let him first thoroughly explore that strange
country laid down on the maps as Seauton; let him look down
into its craters and find whether they be burnt out or only sleep-
ing; let him know between the good and evil fruits of its passion-
ate tropics; let him experience how healthful are its serene and

366 AMERICAN PROSE

high-lying table-lands; let him be many times driven back (till
he wisely consent to be baffled) from its metaphysical northwest
passages that lead only to the dreary solitudes of a sunless
world, before he think himself morally equipped for travels to
more distant regions. But does he commonly even so much as
think of this, or, while buying amplest trunks for his corporeal
apparel, does it once occur to him how very small a portmanteau
will contain all his mental and spiritual outfit? Oftener, it is
true, that a man who could scarce be induced to expose his un-
clothed body, even in a village of prairie-dogs, will complacently
display a mind as naked as the day it was born, without so much
as a fig-leaf of acquirement on it, in every gallery of Europe. If
not with a robe dyed in the Tyrian purple of imaginative culture,
if not with the close-fitting, active dress of social or business
training, — at least, my dear Storg, one might provide himself
with the merest waist-clout of modesty !

But if it be too much to expect men to traverse and survey
themselves before they go abroad, we might certainly ask that
they should be familiar with their own villages. If not even that,
then it is of little import whither they go, and let us hope that,
by seeing how calmly their own narrow neighborhood bears their
departure, they may be led to think that the circles of disturbance
set in motion by the fall of their tiny drop into the ocean of eter-
nity, will not have a radius of more than a week in any direction;
and that the world can endure the subtraction of even a justice
of the peace with provoking equanimity. In this way, at least,
foreign travel may do them good, may make them, if not wiser,
at any rate less fussy. Is it a great way to go to school, and a
great fee to pay for the lesson? We cannot pay too much for
that genial stoicism which, when life flouts us and says — Put
THAT in your pipe and smoke it / — can puff away with as sincpre a
relish as if it were tobacco of Mount Lebanon in a narghileh of
Damascus.

After all, my dear Storg, it is to know things that one has need
to travel, and not meti. Those force us to come to them, but
these come to us — sometimes whether we will or no. These
exist for us in every variety in our own town. You may find
your antipodes without a voyage to China; he lives therei just

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 367

round the next corner, precise, formal, the slave of precedent,
making all his tea-cups with a break in the edge, because his
model had one, and your fancy decorates him with an endlessness
of airy pigtail. There, too, are John Bull, Jean Crapaud, Hans
Sauerkraut, Pat Murphy, and the rest.
It has been well said —

"He needs no ship to cross the tide.
Who, in the lives around him, sees
Fair window-prospects opening wide
O'er history's fields on every side,
Rome, Egypt, England, Ind, and Greece.

" Whatever moulds of various brain
E'er shaped the world to weal or woe,-^
Whatever Empires wax and wane, —
To him who hath not eyes in vain,
His village-microcosm can show."

But things are good for nothing out of their natural habitat If
the heroic Barnum had succeeded in transplanting Shakespeare's
house to America, what interest would it have had for us, torn
out of its appropriate setting in softly-hilled Warwickshire, which
showed us that the most English of poets must be born in the
most English of counties? I mean by a Thing that which is
not a mere spectacle, that which the mind leaps forth to, as it
also leaps to the mind, as soon as they come within each other's
sphere of attraction, and with instantaneous coalition form a new
product — knowledge. Such, in the understanding it gives us of
early Roman history, is the little territory around Rome, the
gejitis cunabula^ without a sight of which Livy and Niebuhr and
the maps are vain. So, too, one must go to Pompeii and the
Miiseo Borbonico^ to get a true conception of that wondrous
artistic nature of the Greeks, strong enough, even in that petty
colony, to survive foreign conquest and to assimilate barbarian
blood, showing a grace and fertility of invention, whose Roman
copies Raffaello himself could only copy, and enchanting even
the base utensils of the kitchen with an inevitable sense of
beauty to which we subterranean Northmen have not yet so much
as dreamed of climbing. Mere sights one can see quite as well

368 AMERICAN PROSE

at home. Mont Blanc does not tower more grandly in the
memory, than did the dream-peak which loomed afar on the
morning-horizon of hope; nor did the smoke-palm of Vesuvius
stand more erect and fair, with tapering stem and spreading top,
in that Parthenopeian air than under the diviner sky of imagina-
tion. I know what Shakespeare says about home-keeping youths,
and I can fancy what you will add about America being interest-
ing only as a phenomenon, and uncomfortable to live in, because
we have not yet done with getting ready to live. But is not your
Europe, on the other hand, a place where men have done living
for the present, and of value chiefly because of the men who had
done living in it long ago? And if, in our rapidly-moving
country, one feel sometimes as if he had his home in a railroad
train, is there not also a satisfaction in knowing that one is going
^^w^where? To what end visit Europe, if people carry with
them, as most do, their old parochial horizon, going hardly as
Americans even, much less as men? Have we not both seen
persons abroad who put us in mind of parlor goldfish in their
vase, isolated in that little globe of their own element, incapable
of communication with the strange world around them, a show
themselves, while it was always doubtful if they could see at all
beyond the limits of their portable prison? The wise man
travels to discover himself; it is to find himself out that he goes
out of himself and his habitual associations, trying everything in
turn till he find that one activity, sovran over him by divine
right, toward which all the disbanded powers of his nature and
the irregular tendencies of his life gather joyfully, as to the
common rallying-point of their loyalty.

All these things we debated while the ilex logs upon the hearth
burned down to tinkling coals, over which a gray, soft moss of
ashes grew betimes, mocking the poor wood with a pale travesty
of that green and gradual decay on forest-floors, its natural end.
Already the clock at the Capuccini told the morning quarters, and
on the pauses of our talk no sound intervened but the muffled
hoot of an owl in the near convent-garden, or the rattling tramp
of a patrol of that French army which keeps him a prisoner in
his own city who claims to lock and unlock the doors of heaven.
But still the discourse would eddy round one obstinate rocky tenet

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 369

of mine, for I maintained, you remember, that the wisest man
was he who stayed at home; that to see the antiquities of the old
world was nothing, since the youth of the world was really no
farther away from us than our own youth ; and that, moreover, we
had also in America things amazingly old, as our boys, for ex-
ample. Add, that in the end this antiquity is a matter of com-
parison, which skips from place to place as nimbly as Emerson's
sphinx, and that one old thing is good only till we have seen an
older. England is ancient till we go to Rome. Etruria de-
thrones Rome, but only to pass this sceptre of Antiquity which
so lords it over our fancies to the Pelasgi, from whom Egypt
straightway wrenches it to give it up in turn to older India. And
whither then? As well rest upon the first step, since the effect
of what is old upon the mind is single and positive, not cumula-
tive. As soon as a thing is past, it is as infinitely far away from
us as if it had happened millions of years ago. And if the learned
Huet be correct, who reckoned that every human thought and
record could be included in ten folios, what so frightfully old
as we ourselves, who can, if we choose, hold in our memories
every syllable of recorded time, from the first crunch of Eve's
teeth in the apple, downward, being thus ideally contemporary
with hoariest Eld?

" Thy pyramids built up with newer might
To us are nothing novel, nothing strange."

Now, my dear Storg, you know my (what the phrenologists call)
inhabitiveness and adhesiveness, how I stand by the old thought,
the old thing, the old place, and the old friend, till I am very
sure I have got a better, and even then migrate painfully. Re-
member the old Arabian story, and think how hard it is to pick
up all the pomegranate-seeds of an opponent's argument, and
how, as long as one remains, you are as far from the end as ever.
Since I have you entirely at my mercy (for you cannot answer me
under five weeks) you will not be surprised at the advent of this
letter. I had always one impregnable position, which was,
that however good other places might be, there was only one
in which we could be born, and which therefore possessed a
quite peculiar and inalienable virtue. We had the fortune, which

370 AMERICAN PROSE

neither of us have had reason to call other than good, to journey
together through the green, secluded valley of boyhood; together
we climbed the mountain wall which shut it in, and looked upon
those Italian plains of early manhood; and, since then, we have
met sometimes by a well, or broken bread together at an oasis in
the arid desert of life, as it truly is. With this letter I propose
to make you my fellow-traveller in one of those fireside voyages
which, as we grow older, we make oftener and oftener through
our own past. Without leaving your elbow-chair, you shall go
back with me thirty years, which will bring you among things and
persons as thoroughly preterite as Romulus or Numa. For, so
rapid are our changes in America, that the transition from old to
new, the shifting from habits and associations to others entirely
different, is as rapid almost as the pushing in of one scene and
the drawing out of another on the stage. And it is this which
makes America so interesting to the philosophic student of his-
tory and man. Here, as in a theatre, the great problems of
anthropology, which in the old world were ages in solving, but
which are solved, leaving only a dry net result; are compressed,
as it were, into the entertainment of a few hours. Here we have
I know not how many epochs of history and phases of civilization
contemporary with each other, nay, within five minutes of each
other by the electric telegraph. In two centuries we have seen
rehearsed the dispersion of man from a small point over a whole
continent; we witness with our own eyes the action of those forces
which govern the great migration of the peoples, now historical
in Europe; we can watch the action and reaction of different
races, forms of government, and higher or lower civilizations.
Over there, you have only the dead precipitate, demanding
tedious analysis; but here the elements are all in solution, and
we have only to look to know them all. History, which every day
makes less account of governors and more of man, must find here
the compendious key to all that picture-writing of the Past
Therefore it is, my dear Storg, that we Yankees may still esteem
our America a place worth living in. But calm your apprehen-
sions : I do not propose to drag you with me on such an historical
circumnavigation of the globe, but only to show you that (how-
ever needful it may be to go abroad for the study of aesthetics) a

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 371

man who uses the eyes of his heart, may find here also pretty bits
of what may be called the social picturesque, and little land-
scapes over which that Indian-summer atmosphere of the Past
broods as sweetly and tenderly as over a Roman ruin. Let us
look at the Cambridge of thirty years since.

The seat of the oldest college in America, it had, of course,
some of that cloistered quiet which characterizes all university
towns. But, underlying this, it had an idiosyncrasy of its own.
Boston was not yet a city, and Cambridge was still a country vil-
lage, with its own habits and traditions, not yet feeling too
strongly the force of suburban gravitation. Approaching it from
the west by what was then called the New Road (it is so called
no longer, for we change our names whenever we can, to the
great detriment of all historical association) you would pause on
the brow of Symonds' Hill to enjoy a view singularly soothing
and placid. In front of you lay the town, tufted with elms, lin-
dens, and horse-chestnuts, which had seen Massachusetts a
colony, and were fortunately unable to emigrate with the tories
by whom, or by whose fathers, they were planted. Over it rose
the noisy belfry of the college, the square, brown tower of the
church, and the slim, yellow spire of the parish meeting-house,
by no means ungraceful, and then an invariable characteristic of
New England religious architecture. On your right, the Charles
slipped smoothly through green and purple salt-meadows, dark-
ened, here and there, with the blossoming black-grass as with a
stranded cloud-shadow. Over these marshes, level as water, but
without its glare, and with softer and more soothing gradations
of perspective, the eye was carried to a horizon of softly-rounded
hills. To your left hand, upon the Old Road, you saw some half-
dozen dignified old houses of the colonial time, all comfortably
fronting southward. If it were spring-time, the rows of horse-
chestnuts along the fronts of these houses showed, through every
crevice of their dark heap of foliage, and on the end of every
drooping limb, a cone of pearly flowers, while the hill behind
was white or rosy with the crowding blooms of various fruit-trees.
There is no sound, unless a horseman clatters over the loose planks
of the bridge, while his antipodal shadow glides silently over the
mirrored bridge below, or unless

372 AMERICAN PROSE

" O winged rapture, feathered soul of spring,
Blithe voice of woods, fields, waters, all in one,
Pipe blown through by the warm, mild breath of Janet
Shepherding her white flocks of woolly clouds,
The Bobolink has come, and climbs the wind
With rippling wings, that quaver, not for flight.
But only joy, or, yielding to its will,
Runs down, a brook of laughter, through the air."

Such was the charmingly rural picture which he who, thirty
years ago, went eastward over Symonds' Hill, had given him for
nothing to hang in the Gallery of Memory. But we are a city
now, and Common Councils have as yet no notion of the truth
(learned long ago by many a European hamlet) that picturesque-
ness adds to the actual money value of a town. To save a few
dollars in gravel, they have cut a kind of dry ditch through the
hill, where you suffocate with dust in summer, or flounder through
waist-deep snow-drifts in winter, with no prospect but the crum-
bling earth-walls on each side. The landscape was carried away,
cart-load by cart-load, and, deposited on the roads, forms a part
of that unfathomable pudding, which has, I fear, driven many a
teamster and pedestrian to the use of phrases not commonly found
in English dictionaries.

We called it " the Village " then (I speak of Old Cambridge),
and it was essentially an English village, quiet, unspeculative,
without enterprise, sufficing to itself, and only showing such dif-
ferences from the original type as the public school and the S3rs-
tem of town government might superinduce. A few houses,
chiefly old, stood around the bare common, with ample elbow-
room, and old women, capped and spectacled, still peered through
the same windows from which they had watched Lord Peroy's
artillery rumble by to Lexington, or caught a glimpse of the hand-
some Virginia General who had come to wield our homespun
Saxon chivalry. People were still living who regretted the late
unhappy separation from the Mother Island, who had seen no
gentry since the Vassalls went, and who thought that Boston had
ill kept the day of her patron saint, Botolph, on the 17th June,
1775. The hooks were to be seen from which had swung the
hammocks of Burgoyne's captive red-coats. If memory does not

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 373

deceive me, women still washed clothes in the town-spring, clear
as that of Bandusia. One coach sufficed for all the travel to the
metropolis. Commencement had not ceased to be the great
holiday of the Puritan Commonwealth, and a fitting one it was
— the festival of Santa Scolastica, whose triumphal path one
may conceive strewn with leaves of spelling-book instead of bay.
The students (scholars they were called then) wore their sober
uniform, not ostentatiously distinctive nor capable of rousing
democratic envy, and the old lines of caste were blurred rather
than rubbed out, as servitor was softened into beneficiary. The
Spanish king was sure that the gesticulating student was either
mad or reading Don Quixotte, and if, in tliose days, you met a
youth swinging his arms and talking to himself, you might con-
clude that he was either a lunatic or one who was to appear in a
"part" at the next Commencement. A favorite place for the
rehearsal of these orations was the retired amphitheatre of the
Gravelpit, perched unregarded on whose dizzy edge, I have heard
many a burst of plus-quatn- Ciceronian eloquence, and (often re-
peated) the regular saluto vos praestantissimas, &c., which every
year (with a glance at the gallery) causes a flutter among the fans
innocent of Latin, and delights to applauses of conscious superi-
ority the youth almost as innocent as they. It is curious, by the
way, to note how plainly one can feel the pulse of self in the
plaudits of an audience. At a political meeting, if the enthusi-
asm of the lieges hang fire, it may be exploded at once by an al-
lusion to their intelligence or patriotism, and at a literary festival,
the first Latin quotation draws the first applause, the clapping of
hands being intended as a tribute to our own familiarity with
that sonorous tongue, and not at all as an approval of the particu-
lar sentiment conveyed in it. For if the orator should say,
"Well has Tacitus remarked, Americani omnes sunt naturali-
ter fures ei siulti^'' it would be all the same. But the Gravel-
pit was patient, if irresponsive; nor did the declaimer always
fail to bring down the house, bits of loosened earth falling now
and then from the precipitous walls, their cohesion perhaps over-
come by the vibrations of the voice, and happily satirizing the effect
of most popular discourses, which prevail rather with the clay
than with the spiritual part of the hearer. Was it possible for

374 AMERICAN PROSE

US in those days to conceive of a greater potentate than the Presi-
dent of the University, in his square doctor's cap, that still
filially recalled Oxford and Cambridge? If there was a doubt, it
was suggested only by the Governor, and even by him on artillery
election days alone, superbly martial with epaulets and buckskin
breeches, and bestriding the war-horse, promoted to that solemn
duty for his tameness and steady habits.

Thirty years ago, the Town had indeed a character. Railways
and omnibuses had not rolled flat all little social prominences
and peculiarities, making every man as much a citizen every
where as at home. No Charlestown boy could come to our
annual festival, without fighting to avenge a certain traditional
porcine imputation against the inhabitants of that historic
locality, to which our youth gave vent, in fanciful imitations of
the dialect of the sty, or derisive shouts of " Charlestown hogs ! "
The penny newspaper had not yet silenced the tripod of the bar-
ber, oracle of news. Every body knew every body, and all about
every body, and village wit, whose high 'change was around the
little market-house in the town-square, had labelled every more
marked individuality with nick-names that clung like burs.
Things were established then, and men did not run through all
the figures on the dial of society so swiftly as now, when hurry
and competition seem to have quite unhung the modulating pen-
dulum of steady thrift, and competent training. Some slow-
minded persons even followed their father's trade, an humiliating
spectacle, rarer every day. We had our established loafers,
topers, proverb-mongers, barber, parson, nay, postmaster, whose
tenure was for life. The great political engine did not then
come down at regular quadrennial intervals, like a nail-cutting
machine, to make all official lives of a standard length, and to
generate lazy and intriguing expectancy. Life flowed in recog-
nized channels, narrower, perhaps, but with all the more indi-
viduality and force.

If K. were out of place as president, that was not P. as Greek
professor. Who that ever saw him can forget him, in his old
age, like a lusty winter, frosty but kindly, with great silver spec-
tacles of the heroic period, such as scarce twelve noses of these

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 375

degenerate days could bear? He was a natural celibate, not
dwelling " like the fly in the heart of the apple," but like a lonely
bee, rather, absconding himself in Hymettian flowers, incapable
of matrimony as a solitary palm-tree. There was not even a tra-
dition of youthful disappointment. I fancy him arranging his
scrupulous toilet, not for Amaryllis or Neaera, but, like Machia-
velli, for the society of his beloved classics. His ears had needed
no prophylactic wax to pass the Sirens* isle, nay, he would have
kept them the wider open, studious of the dialect in which they
sang, and perhaps triumphantly detecting the Aeolic digamma in
their lay. A thoroughly single man, single-minded, single-
hearted, buttoning over his single heart a single-breasted surtout,
and wearing always a hat of a single fashion, — did he in secret
regard the dual number of his favorite language as a weakness?
The son of an officer of distinction in the Revolutionary War,
he mounted the pulpit with the erect port of a soldier, and carried
his cane more in the fashion of a weapon than a staff, but with
the point lowered in token of surrender to the peaceful proprie-
ties of his calling. Yet sometimes the martial instincts would
burst the cerements of black coat and clerical neck-cloth, as once
when the students had got into a fight upon the training-field,
and the licentious soldiery, furious with rum, had driven them at
point of bayonet to the college-gates, and even threatened to lift
their arms against the Muses* bower. Then, like Major Goffe
at Deerfield, suddenly appeared the grayhaired P., all his father
resurgent in him, and shouted, " Now, my lads, stand your ground,
you're in the right now! don't let one of them get inside
the college grounds ! " Thus he allowed arms to get the better
of the ioga^ but raised it, like the Prophet's breeches, into a
banner, and carefully ushered resistance with a preamble of in-
fringed right. Fidelity was his strong characteristic, and burned
equably in him through a life of eighty-three years. He drilled
himself till inflexible habit stood sentinel before all those pos-
tern-weaknesses which temperament leaves unbolted to tempta-
tion. A lover of the scholar's herb, yet loving freedom more,
and knowing that the animal appetites ever hold one hand behind
them for Satan to drop a bribe in, he would never have two segars
in his house at once, but walked every day to the shop to fetch

376 AMERICAN PROSE

his single diurnal solace. Nor would he trust himself with two
on Saturdays, preferring (since he could not violate the Sabbath
even by that infinitesimal traffic) to depend on Providential
ravens, which were seldom wanting in the shape of some black-
coated friend who knew his need and honored the scruple that
occasioned it. He was faithful also to his old hats, in which
appeared the constant service of the antique world, and which he
preserved for ever, piled like a black pagoda under his dressing-
table. No scarecrow was ever the residuary legatee of his
beavers, though one of them in any of the neighboring peach-
orchards would have been sovran against an attack of freshmen.
He wore them all in turn, getting through all in the course of the
year, like the sun through the signs of the Zodiac, modulating
them according to seasons and celestial phenomena, so that never
was spider-web or chickweed so sensitive a weather-gauge as
they. Nor did his political party find him less loyal. Taking
all the tickets, he would seat himself apart and carefully com-
pare them with the list of regular nominations as printed in his
Daily Advertiser before he dropped his ballot, in the box. In
less ambitious moments it almost seems to me that I would rather
have had that slow, conscientious vote of P. 's alone, than have
been chosen alderman of the ward !

If you had walked to what was then Sweet Auburn by the pleas-
ant Old Road, on some June morning thirty years ago, you would,
very likely, have met two other characteristic persons, both phan-
tasmagoric now, and belonging to the Past. Fifty years earlier,
the scarlet-coated, rapiered figures of Vassall, Oliver, and Brattle,
creaked up and down there on red-heeled shoes, lifting the cere-
monious three-cornered hat, and offering the fugacious hospitali-
ties of the snuff-box. They are all shadowy alike now, not one
of your Etruscan Lucumos or Roman Consuls more so, my dear
Storg. First is W., his queue slender and tapering like the tail
of a violet crab, held out horizontally, by the high collar of his
shepherd 's-gray overcoat, whose style was of the latest when he
studied at Leyden in his hot youth. The age of cheap clothes
sees no more of those faithful old garments, as proper to their
wearers and as distinctive as the barks of trees, and by long use
interpenetrated with their very nature. Nor do we see so many

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 377

Humors (still in the old sense) now that every man's soul belongs
to the Public, as when social distinctions were more marked, and
men felt that their personalities were their castles, in which they
could entrench themselves against the world. Nowadays men are
shy of letting their true selves be seen, as if in some former life
they had committed a crime, and were all the time afraid of dis-
covery and arrest in this. Formerly they used to insist on your
giving the wall to their peculiarities, and you may still find ex-
amples of it in the parson or the doctor of retired villages. One
of W.'s oddities was touching. A little brook used to run across
the street, and the sidewalk was carried over it by a broad stone.
Of course, there is no brook now. What use did that little
glimpse of ripple serve, where the children used to launch their
chip fleets? W., in going over this stone, which gave a hollow
resonance to the tread, used to strike upon it three times with his
cane, and mutter Tom ! Tom ! Tom ! I used to think he was only
mimicking with his voice the sound of the blows, and possibly it
was that sound which suggested his thought — for he was remem-
bering a favorite nephew prematurely dead. Perhaps Tom had
sailed his boats there; perhaps the reverberation under the old
man's foot hinted at the hollowness of life; perhaps the fleeting
eddies of the water brought to mind \htfugaces annos, W., like
P., wore amazing spectacles, fit to transmit no smaller image than
the page of mightiest folios of Dioscorides or Hercules de
Saxonia, and rising full-disked upon the beholder like those
prodigies of two moons at once, portending change to monarchs.
The great collar disallowing any independent rotation of the head,
I remember he used to turn his whole person in order to bring
their foci to bear upon an object. One can fancy that terrified
nature would have yielded up her secrets at once, without cross-
examination, at their first glare. Through them he had gazed
fondly into the great mare's-nest of Junius, publishing his obser-
vations upon the eggs found therein in a tall octavo. It was he
who introduced vaccination to this Western World. He used to
stop and say good-morning kindly, and pat the shoulder of the
blushing school-boy who now, with the fierce snow-storm wilder-
ing without, sits and remembers sadly those old meetings and
partings in the June sunshine.

378 AMERICAN PROSE

Then, there was S., whose resounding "haw! haw! haw! by
George ! " positively enlarged the income of every dweller in
Cambridge. In downright, honest good cheer and good neighbor-
hood it was worth five hundred a year to every one of us. Its
jovial thunders cleared the mental air of every sulky cloud. Per-
petual childhood dwelt in him, the childhood of his native South-
ern France, and its fixed air was all the time bubbling up and
sparkling and winking in his eyes. It seemed as if his placid old
face were only a mask behind which a merry Cupid had ambushed
himself, peeping out all the while, and ready to drop it when the
play grew tiresome. Every word he uttered seemed to be hilari-
ous, no matter what the occasion. If he were sick and you vis-
ited him, if he had met with a misfortune (and there are few men
so wise that they can look even at the back of a retiring sorrow
with composure), it was all one; his great laugh went off as if
it were set like an alarum-clock, to run down, whether he would
or no, at a certain nick. Even after an ordinary ^^?^?// morning/
(especially if to an old pupil, and in French,) the wonderful
haw/ haw/ haw/ by George/ would burst upon you unexpectedly
like a salute of artillery on some holiday which you had forgotten.
Every thing was a joke to him — that the oath of allegiance had
been administered to him by your grandfather, — that he had
taught Prescott his first Spanish (of which he was proud) — no
matter what. Every thing came to him marked by nature — right
sii/e upy with care, and he kept it so. The world to him, as to
all of us, was like a medal, on the obverse of which is stamped
the image of Joy, and on the reverse that of Care. S. never took
the foolish pains to look at that other side, even if he knew its
existence ; much less would it have occurred to him to turn it
into view and insist that his friends should look at it with him.
Nor was this a mere outside good-humor; its source was deeper
in a true Christian kindliness and amenity. Once when he had
been knocked down by a tipsily-driven sleigh, and was urged to
prosecute the offenders — "No, no," he said, his wounds still
fresh, "young blood! young blood! it must have its way; I was
young myself." Was/ few men come into life so young as S.
went out. He landed in Boston (then the front door of America)
in '93, and, in honor of the ceremony, had his head powdered

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 379

afresh, and put on a suit of court-mourning before he set foot on
the wharf. My fancy always dressed him in that violet silk, and
his soul certainly wore a full court-suit. What was there ever
like his bow? It was as if you had received a decoration, and
could write yourself gentleman from that day forth. His hat
rose, regreeting your own, and, having sailed through the stately
curve of the old regime y sank gently back over that placid brain
which harbored no thought less white than the powder which cov-
ered it. I have sometimes imagined that there was a graduated
arc over his head, invisible to other eyes than his, by which he
meted out to each his rightful share of castorial consideration.
I carry in my memory three exemplary bows. The first is that
of an old beggar, who already carrying in his hand a white hat,
the gift of benevolence, took off the black one from his head also,
and profoundly saluted me with both at once, giving me, in re-
turn for my alms, a dual benediction, puzzling as a nod from
Janus Bifrons. The second I received from an old Cardinal who
was taking his walk just outside the Porta San Giovanni at Rome.
I paid him the courtesy due to his age and rank. Forthwith
rose — first, the Hat; second, the hat of his confessor; third,
that of another priest who attended htm; fourth, the fringed
cocked-hat of his coachman; fifth and sixth, the ditto, ditto, of
his two footmen. Here was an investment, indeed; six hundred
per cent, interest on a single bow ! The third bow, worthy to be
noted in one's almanac among the other mirabiliay was that of S.,
in which courtesy had mounted to the last round of her ladder,
— and tried to draw it up after her.

But the genial veteran is gone even while I am writing this, and
I will play Old Mortality no longer. Wandering among these

recent graves, my dear friend, we may chance to , but no,

I will not end my sentence. I bid you heartily farewell !

[Fireside 7 ravels : " Cambridge Thirty Years Ago." Putnam's Magazine^
1854, vol. iii.]

380 AMERICAN PROSE

KEATS'S POETRY

The faults of Keats* s poetry are obvious enough, but it should
be remembered that he died at twenty-four, and that he offends
by superabundance and not poverty. That he was overlanguaged
at first there can be no doubt, and in this was implied the pos-
sibility of falling back to the perfect mean of diction. It is only
by the rich that the costly plainness, which at once satisfies the
taste and the imagination, is attainable.

Whether Keats was original or not we do not think it useful to
discuss until it has been settled what originality is. Mr. Milnes
tells us that this merit (whatever it is) has been denied to Keats
because his poems take the color of the authors he happened to
be reading at the time he wrote them. But men have their intel-
lectual ancestry, and the likeness of some one of them is forever
unexpectedly flashing out in the features of a descendant, it may
be after a gap of several generations. In the parliament of the
present, every man represents a constituency of the past. It is
true that Keats has the accent of the men from whom he learned
to speak, but this is to make originality a mere question of exter-
nals, and in this sense the author of a dictionary might bring an
action of trover against every author who used his words. It is
the man behind the words that gives them value, and if Shak-
speare help himself to a verse or a phrase, it is with ears that have
learned of him to listen that we feel the harmony of the one, and
it is the mass of his intellect that makes the other weighty with
meaning. Enough that we recognize in Keats that undefinable
newness and unexpectedness that we call genius. The sunset
is original every evening, though for thousands of years it has
built out of the same light and vapor its visionary cities with
domes and pinnacles, and its delectable mountains which night
shall utterly abase and destroy.

Three men, almost contemporaneous with each other, Words-
worth, Keats, and Byron, were the great means of bringing back
English poetry from the sandy deserts of rhetoric, and recovering
for her her triple inheritance of simplicity, sensuousness and
passion. Of these, Wordsworth was the only conscious reformer,

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 38 1

and his hostility to the existing formalism injured his earlier
poems by tinging them with something of iconoclastic extrava-
gance. He was the deepest thinker, Keats the most essentially
a poet, and Byron the most keenly intellectual of the three.
Keats had the broadest mind, or at least his mind was open in
more sides, and he was able to understand Wordsworth and judge
Byron, equally conscious, through his artistic sense, of the great-
nesses of the one, and the many littlenesses of the other, while
Wordsworth was isolated in a feeling of bis prophetic character,
and Byron had only an uneasy and jealous instinct of contem-
porary merit. The poems of Wordsworth, as he was the most
individual, accordingly reflect the moods of his own nature;
those of Keats, from sensitiveness of organization, the moods of
his own taste and feeling; and those of Byron, who was impres-
sible chiefly through the understanding, the intellectual and
moral wants of the time in which he lived. Wordsworth has in-
fluenced most the ideas of succeeding poets; Keats their forms;
and Byron, interesting to men of imagination less for his writ-
ings than for what his writings indicate, reappears no more in
poetry, but presents an ideal to youth made restless with vague
desires not yet regulated by experience nor supplied with motives
by the duties of life.

As every young person goes through all the world-old experi-
ences, fancying them something peculiar and personal to himself,
so it is with every new generation, whose youth always finds its
representatives in its poets. Keats rediscovered the delight and
wonder that lay enchanted in the dictionary. Wordsworth re-
volted at the poetic diction which he found in vogue, but his own
language rarely rises above it except when it is upborne by the
thought. Keats had an instinct for fine words, which are in
themselves pictures and ideas, and had more of the power of
poetic expression than any modern English poet. And by poetic
expression we do not mean merely a vividness in particulars, but
the right feeling which heightens or subdues a passage or a whole
poem to the proper tone, and gives entireness to the effect.
There is a great deal more than is commonly supposed in this
choice of words. Men's thoughts and opinions are in a great
degree vassals of him who invents a new phrase or reapplies an

382 AMERICAN PROSE

old epithet. The thought or feeling a thousand times repeated,
becomes his at last who utters it best. This power of language
is veiled in the old legends which make the invisible powers the
servants of some word. As soon as we have discovered the word
for our joy or sorrow we are no longer its serfs, but its lords.
We reward the discoverer of an anaesthetic for the body and make
him member of all the societies, but him who finds a nepenthe
for the soul we elect into the small academy of the immortals.
The poems of Keats mark an epoch in English poetry; for,
however often we may find traces of it in others, in them found
its most unconscious expression that reaction against the barrel-
organ style which had been reigning by a kind of sleepy divine
right for half a century. The lowest point was indicated when
there was such an utter confounding of the common and the un-
common sense that Dr. Johnson wrote verse and Burke prose.
The most profound gospel of criticism was, that nothing was good
poetry that could not be translated into good prose, as if one
should say that the test of sufficient moonlight was that tallow-
candles could be made of it. We find Keats at first going to the
other extreme, and endeavoring to extract green cucumbers from
the rays of tallow; but we see also incontestable proof of the
greatness and purity of his poetic gift in the constant return
toward equilibrium and repose in his later poems. And it is a
repose always lofty and clear-aired, like that of the eagle balanced
in incommunicable sunshine. In him a vigorous understanding
developed itself in equal measure with the divine faculty; thought
emancipated itself from expression without becoming in turn its
tyrant; and music and meaning fioated together, accordant as
swan and shadow, on the smooth element of his verse. Without
losing its sensuousness, his poetry refined itself and grew more
inward, and the sensational was elevated into the typical by the
control of that finer sense which underlies the senses and is the
spirit of them.

[TAg Life of Keats, prefixed to The Poetical Works of John JCeats, Bos-
ton, 1854.]

WALT WHITMAN

[Walt (Walter) Whitman was born at West Hills, Long Island, May 31,
1 819, and died at Camden, NJ., March 25, 1892. His father was of Eng-
lish, his mother of Dutch descent, and on his mother's side there was also
Quaker blood. His formal education did not go beyond that furnished by the
public schools, but he read much, and had a rare gift for assimilating the essence
of what he read. His youth was spent in varied pursuits. He was at different
times a teacher, a compositor, and an editor. In 1847-48 he edited the Brook-
lyn Eagle. In 1849 he started on a long tour, largely performed on foot, to
the chief cities of the country. He journeyed through Pennsylvania and Vir-
ginia, down the Ohio and the Mississippi to New Orleans, and returned by way
of St. Louis, Chicago, and the lake cities, finding means for his travels by work
on various journals. In 1851-52 he owned and managed a Brooklyn paper.
For some years he was a carpenter and builder. During the war he was a vol-
unteer nurse in the Washington hospitals, supporting himself by writing for the
newspapers. The nervous strain of his experiences as a nurse and an attack
of hospital fever made severe inroads on his robust constitution, but he held
a government clerkship from 1865 until 1874, when he was stricken with
partial paralysis, from the effect of which he never wholly recovered. The re-
mainder of his life he spent mainly in Camden, N.J., visiting New York
frequently, and occasionally making longer journeys. No American writer hay
known the rank and file of his countrymen as Whitman did. In " Man-
hattan," the city he knew best and loved best, as well as in other cities and in
the country, he " became thoroughly conversant," as his biographer attests,
** with the shops, houses, sidewalks, ferries, factories, tavern gatherings, politi-
cal meetings, carousings, etc. He knew the hospitals, poorhouses, prisons,
and their inmates," and honest laborers of all kinds and descriptions, with
people of greater education. And to this wide knowledge he added a sym-
pathy equally penetrating and all-embracing.

Whitman's principal prose writings are: Democratic Vistas (1871), Mem-
oranda during the ^^^r (1875), Specimen Days and Collect (1882-83), iV<?-
vember Boughs (1888).]

The reputation of Walt Whitman rests upon the poetical por-
tion of his writings ; but while that part of his works remains in
the public eye, as it long must on account of its singularity of
form and its inspiration, the lesser part which appears in the garb
of prose will also be of interest, as containing the history of the

383

384 AMERICAN PROSE

man and the abstract ideas of the writer. In Specimen Days^
Whitman describes his parentage and early surroundings, the
sights and occupations that filled his youth, his wanderings, his
activity during the Civil War as a visitor and comforter of
wounded soldiers in the hospitals at Washington, and finally his
rambles and meditations in the woods of New Jersey. In Demo-
cratic Vistas, he explains his theory of his own poetry and the
relation of the literature of the past and of the fiiture to American
society. Taking the two books together, we are able to learn
what was Whitman's inspiration and ambition, what he thought of
his country, of himself, and of his fiinction.

Much of this, indeed, might have been gathered from the poems
by an attentive reader ; yet it is an advantage to have it all set
down by the author in an autobiographical fashion with eloquence,
clearness, and evident sincerity. The conditions that made
possible so remarkable a writer, his personal character, and his
ideal of the society he meant to describe and to serve, are thus
brought vividly before us. And these confessions are not only
interesting to one who wishes to understand the author of the
Leaves of Grass, but they are in themselves of considerable imagi-
native and historical value.

His parents were farmers in central Long Island, and his
early years were spent in that district. The family seems to
have been not too prosperous and somewhat nomadic; Whit-
man himself drifted through boyhood without much guidance.
We find him now at school, now helping the laborers at the farms,
now wandering along the beaches of Long Island, finally at
Brooklyn, working in an apparently desultory way as a printer,
and sometimes as a writer for a local newspaper. He must have
read or heard something, during this early period, of the English
classics j his style often betrays the deep effect made upon him
by the grandiloquence of the Bible, of Shakespeare, and of Milton.
l^ut his chief interest, if we may trust his account, was already in
his own sensations. The aspects of nature, the forms and habits
of animals, the sights of cities, the movement and talk of common
people, were his constant delight. His mind was flooded with
these images, keenly felt and often vividly rendered with bold
strokes of realism and imagination. Many poets have had this

WALT WHITMAN 385

faculty to seize the elementary aspects of things, but none has had
it so exclusively ; with Whitman the surface is absolutely all and
the underlying structure is without interest and almost without
existence. He had had no education, and his natural delight in
imbibing sensations had not been trained to the uses of practical
or theoretical intelligence. He basked in the sunshine of percep-
tion and wallowed in the stream, of his own sensibility, as later at
Camden in the shallows of his favorite brook. Even during the
war, when he heard the " drum-taps " so clearly, he could only
gaze at the picturesque and terrible aspects of the struggle, and
linger among the wounded from day to day with a canine devo-
tion ; he could not be aroused either to clear thought or positive
action. So also in his poems ; a multiplicity of images pass before
him and he yields himself to each in turn with absolute passivity.
But the world has no inside : it is a phantasmagoria of continuous
visions, vivid, impressive, but monotonous and hard to remember,
like the waves of the sea or the decorations of some barbarous
temple, sublime only by the infinite aggregation of parts. This
abundance of detail without organization ; this wealth of percep-
tion without intelligence, and of imagination without taste, makes
the singularity of Whitman's genius. Full of s)anpathy and recep-
tivit}', with a wonderful gift of graphic characterization and an
occasional rare grandeur of diction, he fills us with a sense of the
individuality and the universality of what he describes — it is a
drop in itself, yet a drop in the ocean. The absence of any
principle of selection, or of a sustained style, enables him to
render aspects of things and of emotions which would have eluded
a trained writer. He is, therefore, interesting even where he is
grotesque or perverse. He is important in that he has accom-
plished, by the sacrifice of almost every other good quality, some-
thing never so well done before. He has approached common
life without bringing in his mind any higher standard by which to
criticise it ; he has seen it, not in contrast to an ideal, but as the
expression of forces more indeterminate and elementary than
itself; and the vulgar, in this cosmic setting, has appeared to him
sublime.

There is clearly some analogy between a mass of images with-
out structure, and the notion of an absolute democracy. Whit-

386 AMERICAN PROSE

man, inclined by his genius and habits to see life without relief oi
organization, believed that his inclination in this respect corre-
sponded to the spirit of his age and country, and that nature and
society, at least in America, were constituted after the fashion of
his own mind. Being the poet of the average man, he wished all
men to be specimens of that average, and being the poet of a fluid
nature, he believed that nature was or should be a formless flux.
This personal bias of Whitman's was further encouraged by the
actual absence of notable distinction in his immediate environ-
ment. Surrounded by ugly things and common people, he felt
himself happy, ecstatic, overflowing with a kind of patriarchal love.
He accordingly came to think there was a spirit of the New
World which he embodied and which was in complete opposition
to that of the Old, that a literature upon novel principles was
needed to express and strengthen this American spirit. Democ-
racy was not to be merely a constitutional device for the better
government of given nations, not merely a movement for the ma-
terial improvement of the lot of the lower classes. It was to be
a social and a moral democracy, and to involve an actual equality
among all men. Whatever kept them apart and made it impos-
sible for them to be messmates together was to be discarded.
The literature of democracy was to ignore all extraordinary gifts
of genius or \drtue, all distinction drawn even from great passions
or romantic adventures. In Whitman's works, in which this new
literature is foreshadowed, there is accordingly not a single char-
acter or a single story. His only hero is Myself, the "single,
separate person," endowed with the primary impulses, with health,
and with sensitiveness to the elementary aspects of nature. The
perfect man of the future is to work with his hands, chanting the
poems of some democratic bard. Women are to have as nearly
as possible the same character as men : the emphasis is to pass from
family life and local ties to the friendship of comrades and the
general brotherhood of man. Men are to be vigorous, comforta-
ble, sentimental, and irresponsible.

This dream is, of course, unrealized and unrealizable in America
as elsewhere. Undeniably there are in America many suggestions
of such a society and such a national character. But the growing
complexity and fixity of institutions tends to obscure these traits

WALT WHITMAN 387

of a primitive and crude democracy. What Whitman seized upon
as the promise of the future was in reality the survival of the past.
He sings the song of pioneers, but it is in the nature of the
pioneer that the greater his success the quicker must be his trans-
formation into something different. When Whitman made the
initial phase of society his ideal, he became the prophet of a lost
cause. That cause was lost not merely when wealth and intelli-
gence began to take shape in this country, but it was lost at the
very foundation of the world, when those laws of evolution were
established which Whitman, like Rousseau, failed to understand.
If we may trust Mr. Herbert Spencer, these laws involve a passage
from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous, and a constant
progress at once in differentiation and in organization — all, in a
word, that Whitman systematically deprecated or ignored. He is
surely not the spokesman of the tendencies of his country, although
he describes some aspects of its present condition ; nor does he
appeal to those he describes, but rather to the dilettanti he
despises. He is regarded as representative chiefly by foreigners,
who look for some grotesque expression of the genius of so young
and prodigious a people.

Fortunately, the political theory that makes Whitman^s princi-
ple of literary prophecy and criticism is not presented, even in
his prose works, bare and unadorned. In Democratic Vistas we
find it clothed with something of the same poetic passion, and
lighted up with the same flashes of intuition, that we admire in
the poems. Even here the temperament is finer than the ideas
and the poet wiser than the thinker. His ultimate appeal is
really to something more general than a national ideal. He speaks
to those minds and to those moods in which sensuality is touched
with mysticism. When the intellect is in abeyance, when we
would " turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-
contained," when we are weary of conscience and of ambition,
and would yield ourselves for a while to the dream of sense,
Walt Whitman is a welcome companion. The images he arouses
in us, fresh, full of light and health and of a kind of frank-
ness and beauty, are prized all the more at such a time because
they are not choice, but drawn perhaps from a hideous and
sordid environment. For this circumstance makes them a bet-

388 AMERICAN PROSE

ter means of escape from convention and from that fatigue and
despair which lurk not far beneath the surface of conven-
tional life. In casting off with self-assurance and a sense of
fresh vitality the distinctions of tradition and reason a man may
feel, as he sinks back comfortably to a lower level of sense and
instinct, that he is returning to nature or escaping into the infinite.
Mysticism makes us proud and happy to renounce the work of
intelligence, both in thought and in life, and persuades us that we
become divine by remaining imperfectly human. Whitman gives
a new expression to this ancient and multiform tendency. He
proclaims the cosmic justification of everything he sees and of his

own satyrlike disposition.

George Santayana

WALT WHITMAN 389

THE WEST AND DEMOCRACY

In a few years the dominion-heart of America will be far
inland, toward the West. Our future national capital may not
be where the present one is. It is possible, nay likely, that in
less than fifty years, it will migrate a thousand or two miles, will
be re-founded, and every thing belonging to it made on a differ-
ent plan, original, far more superb. The main social, political,
spine-character of the States will probably run along the Ohio,
Missouri and Mississippi rivers, and west and north of them,
including Canada. Those regions,'with the group of powerful
brothers toward the Pacific, (destined to the mastership of that
sea and its countless paradises of islands,) will compact and
settle the traits of America, with all the old retained, but more
expanded, grafted on newer, hardier, purely native stock. A
giant growth, composite from the. rest, getting their contribu-
tion, absorbing it, to make it more illustrious. From the north,
intellect, the sun of things, also the idea of unswayable justice,
anchor amid the last, the wildest tempests. From the south the
living soul, the animus of good and bad, haughtily admitting no
demonstration but its own. While from the west itself comes
solid personality, with blood and brawn, and the deep quality of
all-accepting fusion.

Political democracy, as it exists and practically works in Amer-
ica, with all its threatening evils, supplies a training-school for
making first-class men. It is life's gymnasium, not of good
only, but of all. We try often, though we fall back often. A
brave delight, fit for freedom's athletes, fills these arenas, and
fully satisfies, out of the action in them, irrespective of success.
Whatever we do not attain, we at any rate attain the experiences
of the fight, the hardening of the strong campaign, and throb
with currents of attempt at least. Time is ample. Let the vic-
tors come after us. Not for nothing does evil play its part
among us. Judging from the main portions of the history of the
world, so far, justice is always in jeopardy, peace walks amid
hourly pit-falls, and of slavery, misery, meanness, the craft of
tyrants and the credulity of the populace, in some of their pro-

390 AMERICAN PROSE

tean forms, no voice can at any time say, They are not. The
clouds break a little, and the sun shines out — but soon and cer-
tain the lowering darkness falls again, as if to last forever. Yet
there is an immortal courage and prophecy in every sane soul
that cannot, must not, under any circumstances, capitulate.
Vive^ the attack — the perennial assault ! Vive^ the unpopular
cause — the spirit that audaciously aims — the never- abandon'd
efforts, pursued the same amid opposing proofs and precedents.

[Democratic Vistas, 1870. Prose Works, pp. 222, 223. This extract and
those following are reprinted by permission of Whitman's literary executors.]

DEMOCRACY

Dominion strong is the body's; dominion stronger is the
mind's. What has filPd, and fills to-day our intellect, our fancy,
furnishing the standards therein, is yet foreign. The great
poems, Shakspere included, are poisonous to the idea of the
pride and dignity of the common people, the life-blood of
democracy. The models of our literature, as we get it from
other lands, ultramarine, have had their birth in courts, and bask'd
and grown in castle sunshine; all smells of princes* favors. Of
workers of a certain sort, we have, indeed, plenty, contributing
after their kind; many elegant, many learn'd, all complacent.
But touched by the national test, or tried by the standards of
democratic personality, they wither to ashes. I say I have not
seen a single writer, artist, lecturer, or what not, that has con-
fronted the voiceless but ever erect and active, pervading, under-
lying will and typic aspiration of the land, in a spirit kindred to
itself. Do you call those genteel little creatures American poets?
Do you term that perpetual, pistareen, paste-pot work, American
art, American drama, taste, verse? I think I hear, echoed as
from some mountain- top afar in the west, the scornful laugh of
the Genius of these States.

Democracy, in silence, biding its time, ponders its own ideals,
not of literature and art only — not of men only, but of women.
The idea of the women of America, (extricated from this daze,
this fossil and unhealthy air which hangs about the word ia^t)

fVALT WHITMAN 39I

developed, raised to become the robust equals, workers, and, it
may be, even practical and political deciders with the men —
greater than man, we may admit, through their divine maternity,
always their towering, emblematical attribute — but great, at any
rate, as man, in all departments; or, rather, capable of being so,
soon as they realize it, and can bring themselves to give up toys
and fictions, and launch forth, as men do, amid real, indepen-
dent, stormy life.

Then, as towards our thought's finals, (and, in that, overarch-
ing the true scholar's lesson,) we have to say there can be no
complete or epical presentation of democracy in the aggregate,
or anything like it, at this day, because its doctrines will only be
effectually incarnated in any one branch, when, in all, their spirit
is at the root and centre. Far, far, indeed, stretch, in distance,
our Vistas ! How much is still to be disentangled, freed ! How
long it takes to make this American world see that it is, in itself,
the final authority and reliance !

Did you, too, O friend, suppose democracy was only for elec-
tions, for politics, and for a party name ? I say democracy is
only of use there that it may pass on and come to its flower and
fruits in manners, in the highest forms of interaction between
men, and their beliefs — in religion, literature, colleges, and
schools — democracy in all public and private life, and in the
army and navy.^ I have intimated that, as a paramount scheme,
it has yet few or no full realizers and believers. I do not see,
either, that it owes any serious thanks to noted propagandists or
champions, or has been essentially help'd, though often harm'd,
by them. It has been and is carried on by all the moral forces,
and by trade, finance, machinery, intercommunications, and, in
fact, by all the developments of history, and can no more be
stopp'd than the tides, or the earth in its orbit. Doubtless, also,
it resides, crude and latent, well down in the hearts of the fair

1 The whole present system of the officering and personnel of the army and
navy of these States, and the spirit and letter of their trebly-aristocratic rules
and regulations, is a monstrous exotic, a nuisance and revolt, and belong here
just as much as orders of nobility, or the Pope's council of cardinals. I say if
the present theory of our army and navy is sensible and true, then the rest ol
America is an unmitigated fraud.

392 AMERICAN PROSE

average of the American-born people, mainly in the agricultural
regions. But it is not yet, there or anywhere, the fully-receiv*d,
the fervid, the absolute faith.

I submit, therefore, that the fruition of democracy, on aught
like a grand scale, resides altogether in the future. As, under
any profound and comprehensive view of the gorgeous-composite
feudal world, we see in it, through the long ages and cycles of
ages, the results of a deep, integral, human and divine principle,
or fountain, from which issued laws, ecclesia, manners, insti-
tutes, costumes, personalities, poems, (hitherto unequall'd, )
faithfully partaking of their source, and indeed only arising
either to betoken it, or to furnish parts of that varied-flowing
display, whose centre was one and absolute — so, long ages hence,
shall the due historian or critic make at least an equal retrospect,
an equal history for the democratic principle. It too must be
adorn'd, credited with its results — then, when it, with imperial
power, through amplest time, has dominated mankind — has
been the source and test of all the moral, esthetic, social, politi-
cal, and religious expressions and institutes of the civilized
world — has begotten them in spirit and in form, and has car-
ried them to its own unprecedented heights — has had, (it is
possible,) monastics and ascetics, more numerous, more devout
than the monks and priests of all previous creeds — has sway'd
the ages with a breadth and rectitude tallying Nature's own —
has fashioned, systematized, and triumphantly finished and car-
ried out, in its own interest, and with unparallel'd success, a new
earth and a new man.

Thus we presume to write, as it were, upon things that exist
not, and travel by maps yet unmade, and a blank. But the
throes of birth are upon us; and we have something of this
advantage in seasons of strong formations, doubts, suspense — for
then the afflatus of such themes haply may fall upon us, more or
less; and then, hot from surrounding war and revolution, our
speech, though without polish'd coherence, and a failure by the
standard called criticism, comes forth, real at least as the
lightnings.

And may-be we, these days, have, too, our own reward — (for
there are yet some, in all lands, worthy to be so encouraged.)

WALT WHITMAN 393

Though not for us the joy of entering at the last the conquer'd
city — not ours the chance ever to see with our own eyes the
peerless power and splendid eciat of the democratic principle,
arriv'd at meridian, filling the world with effulgence and majesty
far beyond those of past history's kings, or all dynastic sway —
there is yet, to whoever is eligible among us, the prophetic vision,
the joy of being toss'd in the brave turmoil of these times — the
promulgation and the path, obedient, lowly reverent to the voice,
the gesture of the god, or holy ghost, which others see not, hear
not — with the proud consciousness that amid whatever clouds,
seductions, or heart-wearying postponements, we have never
deserted, never despaired, neve* abandoned the faith.

[^DemocraHc Vistas, Prose Works^ pp. 225-227.]

AMERICAN LITERATURE

America demands a poetry that is bold, modern, and all-sur-
rounding and kosmical, as she is herself. It must in no respect
ignore science or the modern, but inspire itself with science and
the modern. It must bend its vision toward the future more than
the past. Like America, it must extricate itself from even the
greatest models of the past, and, while courteous to them, must
have entire faith in itself, and the products of its own democratic
spirit only. Like her, it must place in the van, and hold up at
all hazards, the banner of the divine pride of man in himself,
(the radical foundation of the new religion.) Long enough have
the People been listening to poems in which common humanity,
deferential, bends low, humiliated, acknowledging superiors.
But America listens to no such poems. Erect, inflated, and
fully self-esteeming be the chant; and then America will listen
with pleased ears.

Nor may the genuine gold, the gems, when brought to light at
last, be probably usher' d forth from any of the quarters currently
counted on. To-day, doubtless, the infant genius of American
poetic expression, (eluding those highly-refined imported and
gilt-edged themes, and sentimental and butterfly flights, pleasant
to orthodox publishers — causing tender spasms in the coteries,

394 AMERICAN PROSE

and warranted not to chafe the sensitive cuticle of the most ex
quisitely artificial gossamer delicacy,) lies sleeping far away,
happily unrecognized and uninjur'd by the coteries, the art-
writers, the talkers and critics of the saloons, or the lecturers in
the colleges — lies sleeping, aside, unrecking itself, in some
western idiom, or native Michigan or Tennessee repartee, or
stump-speech — or in Kentucky or Georgia, or the Carolinas —
or in some slang or local song or allusion of the Manhattan, Bos-
ton, Philadelphia or Baltimore mechanic — or up in the Maine
woods — or off in the hut of the California miner, or crossing the
Rocky mountains, or along the Pacific railroad — or on the
breasts of the young farmers of the northwest, or Canada, or
boatmen of the lakes. Rude and coarse nursing-beds, these;
but only from such beginnings and stocks, indigenous here, may
haply arrive, be grafted, and sprout, in time, flowers of genuine
American aroma, and fruits truly and fully our own.

I say it were a standing disgrace to these States — I say it were
a disgrace to any nation, distinguished above others by the variety
and vastness of its territories, its materials, its inventive activity,
and the splendid practicality of its people, not to rise and soar
above others also in its original styles in literature and art, and
its own supply of intellectual and esthetic masterpieces, arche-
typal, and consistent with itself. I know not a land except ours
that has not, to some extent, however small, made its title clear.
The Scotch have their born ballads, subtly expressing their past
and present, and expressing character. The Irish have theirs.
England, Italy, France, Spain, theirs. What has America?
With exhaustless mines of the richest ore of epic, lyric, tale,
tune, picture, &c., in the Four Years* War; with, indeed, I
sometimes think, the richest masses of material ever afforded a
nation, more variegated, and on a larger scale — the first sign of
proportionate, native, imaginative Soul, and first-class works to
match, is, (I cannot too often repeat,) so far wanting.

Long ere the second centennial arrives, there will be some
forty to fifty great States, among them Canada and Cuba. When
the present century closes, our population will be sixty or seventy
millions. The Pacific will be ours, and the Atlantic mainly ours.
There will be daily electric communication with every part of the

WALT WHITMAN 395

globe. What an age ! What a land ! Where, elsewhere, one so
great? The individuality of one nation must tlien, as always, lead
the world. Can there be any doubt who the leader ought to be ?
Bear in mind, though, that nothing less than the mightiest origi-
nal non-subordinated Soul has ever really, gloriously led, or ever
can lead. (This Soul — its other name, in these Vistas, is
Literature.)

{^Democratic Vistas. Prose WorJts, pp. 245-247.]

A NIGHT BATTLE

But it was the tug of Saturday evening, and through the night
and Sunday morning, I wanted to make a special note of. It
was largely in the woods, and quite a general engagement. The
night was very pleasant, at times the moon shining out full and
clear, all Nature so calm in itself, the early summer grass so rich,
and foliage of the trees — yet there the battle raging, and many
good fellows lying helpless, with new accessions to them, and
every minute amid the rattle of muskets and crash of cannon,
(for there was an artillery contest too), the red life-blood oozing
out from heads or trunks or limbs upon that green and dew-cool
grass. Patches of the woods take fire, and several of the
wounded, unable to move, are consumed — quite large spaces
are swept over, burning the dead also — some of the men have
their hair and beards singed — some, burns on their faces and
hands — others holes burnt in their clothing. The flashes of fire
from the cannon, the quick flaring flames and smoke, and the
immense roar — the musketry so general, the light nearly bright
enough for each side to see the other — the crashing, tramping
of men — the yelling — close quarters — we hear the secesh yells
— our men cheer loudly back, especially if Hooker is in sight —
hand to hand conflicts, each side stands up to it, brave, deter-
min'd as demons, they often charge upon us — a thousand deeds
are done worth to write newer greater poems on — and still the
woods on fire — still many are not only scorch'd — too many,
unable to move, are burn'd to death.

Then the camps of the wounded — O heavens, what scene is

396 AMERICAN PROSE

this? — is this indeed humanity — these butchers* shambles?
There are several of them. There they lie, in the largest, in
an open space in the woods, from 200 to 300 poor fellows — the
groans and screams — the odor of blood, mixed with the fresh
scent of the night, the grass, the trees — that slaughter-house ! O
well is it their mothers, their sisters cannot see them — cannot
conceive, and never conceived, these things. One man is shot
by a shell, both in the arm and leg — both are amputated — there
lie the rejected members. Some have their legs blown off —
some bullets through the breast — some indescribably horrid
wounds in the face or head, all mutilated, sickening, torn,
gouged but — some in the abdomen — some mere boys — many
rebels, badly hurt — they take their regular turns with the rest,
just the same as any — the surgeons use them just the same.
Such is the camp of the wounded — such a fragment, a reflection
afar off of the bloody scene — while over all the clear, large
moon comes out at times softly, quietly shining. Amid the
woods, that scene of flitting souls — amid the crack and crash
and yelling sounds — the impalpable perfume of the woods —
and yet the pungent, stifling smoke — the radiance of the moon,
looking from heaven at intervals so placid — the sky so heavenly

— the clear-obscure up there, those buoyant upper oceans — a
few large placid stars beyond, coming silently and languidly out,
and then disappearing — the melancholy, draperied night above,
around. And there, upon the roads, the fields, and in those
woods, that contest, never one more desperate in any age or land

— both parties now in force — masses — no fancy battle, no semi-
play, but fierce and savage demons fighting there — courage and
scorn of death the rule, exceptions almost none.

What history, I say, can ever give — for who can know — the
mad, determin'd tussle of the armies, in all their separate large
and little squads — as this — each steep'd from crown to toe in
desperate, mortal purports? Who know the conflict, hand-to-
hand — the many conflicts in the dark, those shadowy-tangled,
flashing-moonbeam' d woods — the writhing groups and squads —
the cries, the din, the cracking guns and pistols — the distant
cannon — the cheers and calls and threats and awful music of the
oaths — the indescribable mix — the officers' orders, persuasionsr

WALT WHITMAN 397

encouragements — the devils fully rous'd in human hearts — the
strong shout, Charge ^ men, charge — the flash of the naked sword,
and rolling flame and smoke? And still the broken, clear and
clouded heaven — and still again the moonlight pouring silvery
soft its radiant patches over all. Who paint the scene, the sud-
den partial panic of the afternoon, at dusk? Who paint the
irrepressible advance of the second division of the Third corps,
under Hooker himself, suddenly ordered up — those rapid-filing
phantoms through the woods? Who show what moves there in
the shadows, fluid and firm — to save, (and it did save,) the
army's name, perhaps the nation? as there the veterans hold the
field. (Brave Berry falls not yet — but death has mark'd him —
soon he falls.)

[From specimen Days and Collect, 1882, "A Night Battle, over a Week

since." Prose Works, pp. 34-36.]

UNNAMED REMAINS THE BRAVEST SOLDIER

Of scenes like these, I say, who writes — whoe'er can write the
story ? Of many a score — aye, thousands, north and south, of un-
writ heroes, unknown heroisms,' incredible, impromptu, first-class
desperations — who tells? No history ever — no poem sings, no
music sounds, those bravest men of all — those deeds. No for-
mal general's report, nor book in the library, nor column in the
paper, embalms the bravest, north or south, east or west. Un-
named, unknown, remain, and still remain, the bravest soldiers.
Our manliest — our boys — our hardy darlings; no picture gives
them. Likely, the typic one of them (standing, no doubt, for
hundreds, thousands,) crawls aside to some bush-clump, or ferny
tuft, on receiving his death-shot — there sheltering a little while,
soaking roots, grass and soil, with red blood — the battle ad-
vances, retreats, flits from the scene, sweeps by — and there,
haply with pain and suffering (yet less, far less, than is sup-
posed,) the last lethargy winds like a serpent round him — the
eyes glaze in death — none recks — perhaps the burial-squads, in
truce, a week afterwards, search not the secluded spot — and

398 AMERICAN PROSE

there, at last, the Bravest Soldier crumbles in mother earth, un
buried and unknown.

[From Specimen Days and Collect^ '* Unnamed Remains the Bravest
Soldier." Prose Works^ p. 36.]

ENTERING A LONG FARM-LANE

As every man has his hobby-liking, mine is for a real farm-
lane fenced by old chestnut-rails gray-green with dabs of moss
and lichen, copious weeds and briers growing in spots athwart
the heaps of stray-pick'd stones at the fence bases — irregular
paths worn between, and horse and cow tracks — all character-
istic accompaniments marking and scenting the neighborhood in
their seasons — apple-tree blossoms in forward April — pigs, poul-
try, a field of August buckwheat, and in another the long flapping
tassels of maize — and so to the pond, the expansion of the creek^
the secluded-beautiful, with young and old trees, and such recesses
and vistas.

[From specimen Days and Collect^ ** Entering a Long Farm-Lane." Prase

Works, p. 83.]

MANHATTAN FROM THE BAY

June 25. — Returned to New York last night. Out to-day on
the waters for a sail in the wide bay, southeast of Staten island

— a rough, tossing tide, and a free sight — the long stretch of
Sandy Hook, the highlands of Navesink, and the many vessels
outward and inward bound. We came up through the midst of
all, in the full sun. I especially enjoy'd the last hour or two.
A moderate sea-breeze had set in; yet over the city, and the
waters adjacent, was a thin haze, concealing nothing, only adding
to the beauty. From my point of view, as I write amid the soft
breeze, with a sea-temperature, surely nothing on earth of its
kind can go beyond this show. To the left the North river with
its far vista — nearer, three or four warships, anchored peacefully

— the Jersey side, the banks of VVeehawken, the Palisades, and
the gradually receding blue, lost in the distance — to the right

WALT WHITMAN 399

the East river — the mast-heram*d shores — the grand obelisk-
like towers of the bridge, one on either side, in haze, yet plainly
defin'd, giant brothers twain, throwing free graceful interlinking
loops high across the tumbled tumultuous current below — (the
tide i^s just changing to its ebb) — the broad water-spread every-
where crowded — no, not crowded, but thick as stars in the sky
— with all sorts and sizes of sail and steam vessels, plying ferry-
boats, arriving and departing coasters, great ocean Dons, iron-
black, modern, magnificent in size and power, fill'd with their
incalculable value of human life and precious merchandise —
with here and there, above all, those daring, careening things of
grace and wonder, those white and shaded swift-darting fish-birds,
(I wonder if shore or sea elsewhere can outvie them,) ever with
their slanting spars, and fierce, pure, hawk-like beauty and mo-
tion — first-class New York sloop or schooner yachts, sailing, this
fine da^, the free sea in a good wind. And rising out of the
midst, tall-topt, ship-hemm'd, modern, American, yet strangely
oriental, V-shaped Manhattan, with its compact mass, its spires,
its cloud-touching edifices group'd at the centre — the green of
the trees, and all the white, brown and gray of the architecture
well blended, as I see it, under a miracle of limpid sky, deli-
cious light of heaven above, and June haze on the surface below.

[From specimen Days and Collect, "Manhattan from the Bay," Prose
WorkSf pp. 116, 117.]

HUMAN AND HEROIC NEW YORK

The general subjective view of New York and Brooklyn — (will
not the time hasten when the two shall be municipally united in
one, and named Manhattan?) — what I may call the human inte-
rior and exterior of these great seething oceanic populations, as
I get it in this visit, is to me best of all. After an absence of
many years, (1 went away at the outbreak of the secession war,
and have never been back to stay since,) again I resume with
curiosity the crowds, the streets I knew so well, Broadway, the
ferries, the west side of the city, democratic Bowery — human
appearances and manners as seen in all these, and along the

400 AMERICAN PROSE

wharves, and in the perpetual travel of the horse-cars, or the
crowded excursion steamers, or in Wall and Nassau streets by
day — in the places of amusement at night — bubbling and whirl-
ing and moving like its own environment of waters — endless
humanity in all phases — Brooklyn also — taken in for the last
three weeks. No need to specify minutely — enough to say that
(making all allowances for the shadows and side-streaks of a mill-
ion-headed-city) the brief total of the impressions, the human
qualities, of these vast cities, is to me comforting, even heroic,
beyond statement. Alertness, generally fine physique, clear eyes
that look straight at you, a singular combination of reticence and
self-possession, with good nature and friendliness — a prevailing
range of according manners, taste and intellect, surely beyond
any elsewhere upon earth — and a palpable outcropping of that
personal comradeship I look forward to as the subtlest, strongest
future hold of this many-item'd Union — are not only constantly
visible here in these mighty channels of men, but they form the
rule and average. To-day, I should say — defiant of cynics and
pessimists, and with a full knowledge of all their exceptions —
an appreciative and perceptive study of the current humanity of
New York gives the directest proof yet of successful Democracy,
and of the solution of that paradox, the eligibility of the free and
fully developed individual with the paramount aggregate. In old
age, lame and sick, pondering for years on many a doubt and
danger for this republic of ours — fully aware of all that can be
said on the other side — I find in this visit to New York, and the
daily contact and rapport with its myriad people, on the scale of
the oceans and tides, the best, most effective medicine my soul
has yet partaken — the grandest physical habitat and surroundings
of land and water the globe affords — namely, Manhattan island
and Brooklyn, which the future shall join in one city — city of
superb democracy, amid superb surroundings.

[From Specimen Days and Collect^ " Human and Heroic New York."
Prose Works^ pp. 117, 118.]

WALT WHITMAN 40 1

AMERICA'S CHARACTERISTIC LANDSCAPE

Speaking generally as to the capacity and sure future destiny of
that plain and prairie area (larger than any European kingdom)
it is the inexhaustible land of wheat, maize, wool, flax, coal,
iron, beef and pork, butter and cheese, apples and grapes — land
of ten million virgin farms — to the eye at present wild and un-
productive — yet experts say that upon it when irrigated may
easily be grown enough wheat to feed the world. Then as to
scenery (giving my own thought and feeling,) while I know the
standard claim is that Yosemite, Niagara falls, the upper Yellow-
stone and the like, afford the greatest natural shows, I am not so
sure but the Prairies and Plains, while less stunning at first sight,
last longer, fill the esthetic sense fuller, precede all the rest, and
make North America's characteristic landscape.

Indeed through the whole of this journey, with all its shows
and varieties, what most impressed me, and will longest remain
with me, are these same prairies. Day after day, and night after
night, to my eyes, to all my senses — the esthetic one most of all
— they silently and broadly unfolded. Even their simplest sta-
tistics are sublime.

[From specimen Days and Collect^ "America's Characteristic Landscape.**
Prose Works ^ p. 1 50.]

THE SILENT GENERAL

Sept, 28, '79. — So General Grant, after circumambiating the
world, has arrived home again — landed in San Francisco yester-
day, from the ship City of Tokio from Japan. What a man he
is ! what a history ! what an illustration — his life — of the capaci-
ties of that American individuality common to us all. Cynical
critics are wondering "what the people can see in Grant" to
make such a hubbub about. They aver (and it is no doubt true)
that he has hardly the average of our day's literary and scholastic
culture, and absolutely no pronounced genius or conventional
eminence of any sort. Correct: but he proves how an average

402 AMERICAN PROSE

western farmer, mechanic, boatman, carried by tides of circum-
stances, perhaps caprices, into a position of incredible military
or civic responsibilities, (history has presented none more trying,
no born monarch's, no mark more shining for attack or envy,)
may steer his way fitly and steadily through them all, carrying
the country and himself with credit year after year — command
over a million armed men — fight more than fifty heavy battles —
rule for eight years a land larger than all the kingdoms of Europe
combined — and then, retiring, quietly (with a cigar in his
mouth) make the promenade of the whole world, through its
courts and coteries, and kings and czars and mikados, and splen-
didest glitters and etiquettes, as phlegmatically as he ever walk*d
the portico of a Missouri hotel after dinner. I say all this is
what people like — and I am sure I like it. Seems to me it
transcends Plutarch, How these old Greeks, indeed, would have
seized on him! A mere plain man — no art, no poetry — only
practical sense, ability to do, or try his best to do, what devolv'd
upon him. A common trader, money-maker, tanner, farmer of
Illinois — general for the republic, in its terrific struggle with
itself, in the war of attempted secession — President following,
(a task of peace, more difficult than the war itself) — nothing
heroic, as the authorities put it — and yet the greatest hero. The
gods, the destinies, seem to have concentrated upon him.

[From specimen Days and Collect, " The Silent General." Prose Works,
pp. i53» 154.]

ULYSSES S. GRANT

[Hiram Ulysses Grant was born at Point Pleasant, in southern Ohio, April
27, 1822. His father, Jesse R. Grant, was a young tanner of good family,
who soon afterward set up in business for himself in Georgetown, Ohio.
Grant spent the first seventeen years of his life in and about Georgetown.
He was appointed to West Point in 1839, and was entered by mistake as
Ulysses S. Grant. He graduated at the middle of his class in 1843. ^^
passed through the Mexican war, serving gallantly, being twice breveted for
distinguished action. He served six years at northern posts, resigning, in
1854, from Humboldt Bay, Gal. He reentered service as colonel of
the Twenty-first Illinois Volunteers, in 1861, and in four years rose to the sole
command of the armies of the United States. He was elected President in
1868, and served two terms. He passed round the world in 1877-79, receiv-
ing the greatest honors ever shown to an American. He allowed his name
to stand for nomination the third time, and was defeated in the Convention of
1880. He moved to New York, entered business, and was dragged down to
ruin by the failure of the firm with which he was connected. Finding him-
self old, poor, and attacked by incurable cancer in the throat, he set himself
to work to write a book which should tell the story of his life and shield his
wife from want. He died before the book, his Personal Memoirs, was entirely
finished, on July 23, 1885.]

It was reserved for Ulysses Grant in the last year of his life to
amaze his friends by writing a book. Every one knew of his
reticence, no one had thought of him as writer. He had never
considered himself in any sense a literary man, but had held in
high admiration men like Halleck and Scott, who had the power
to express themselves in the elevated style which seemed to hira
good literature. Until dire necessity forced him to the task, he
had never given a thought to the recording of his great deeds.
Having made history, he left to others the task of writing it-
And yet he had already written more than most literary men. In
that long row of volumes, fat and portly, called The Official
War Records^ his mind, along certain lines of thought, had
found the fullest expression. Literally hundreds of thousands of

403

404 AMERICAN PROSE

words written by his own hand are there preserved. No one can
study the enormous bulk of these despatches, letters, and orders
without coming to a high admiration of the marvellous command
which General Grant possessed over details of widely separated
plans and campaigns. Nothing confused or hurried him. In
fact, he spoke best as he thought best, when pushed hardest.
One cannot fail to be impressed, also, by the nobility and lack of
self-consciousness in all that he wrote. In this immense output,
it is safe to say there is not one line discreditable to him.

After the war closed, his official career as President again de-
manded from him much writing of a certain sort. It could not
be said, therefore, that he was without practice in the use of the
pen. But in all this writing the idea of form was absent. He
was occupied with the plain statement of fact, or of his opinions.
Of the narrative form he had made little use, except in letters
during the Mexican war.

When he set himself to write his memoirs, he began where he
had laid down the pen after the war. He confined himself to the
simple and forthright statement of the facts. He told again the
story of his campaigns. His first paper was upon the disputed
battle of Shiloh, concerning which he had never before made a
complete report. He passed from this to a succinct and masterly
statement of the siege of Vicksburg ; and, having prepared him-
self for pure narrative, turned back to the story of his boyhood,
his life in Mexico, and on the coast. In this order the great
drama of his life unfolded itself naturally and easily mider his
pen.

The peculiarity of his mind was such that no phrase for efTect,
no extraneous adornment, was possible to him. He was, as a
friend well said, " almost tediously truthful." It was his primary
intention to express himself clearly and with as few words as pos-
sible. The workings of his mind were always direct and simple.
Whatever the complications going on around him, no matter how
acrid the disputes and controversies of subordinates, in the midst
of the confusing clash of opinions, charges, and counter-charges,
Grant himself remained perfectly direct, calm, and single-minded.
Piis mind digested every fact within reach, and cleared itsdf
before he came to speech. He never used words to cover up

ULYSSES S, GRANT 405

his thought, seldom to aid his thought, but only to express his
thought.

The circumstances under which the larger part of his story ^as
written show clearly his will power and his manner of composi-
tion. For months he was unable to eat solid food, water felt like
hot lead passing down his throat, and he was unable to sleep
without anodynes. A malignant ulcer, incurable and insatiate,
was eating its way into his throat at the base of the tongue.
Speech became difficult, and at last impossible. During the time
that he was still able to speak, he dictated much of the story.
Wasted to pitiful thinness, and suffering ceaselessly, he was obliged
to sit day and night in a low chair with his feet outthrust toward
the fire. His mind was abnormally active, filled with the ceaseless
revolving panorama of his epic deeds. At times he was forced
to the use of morphia to cut off the intolerable movement of his
thought. The sleeplessness which was a natural accompaniment
of his disease was added to by the task which he had set himself
to complete, but he did not allow himself to cut his work short on
that account. Yet no trace of his suffering is to be found in the book.

He dictated slowly, but almost without hesitation, and his
thought grouped itself naturally into paragraphs, and seemed to
be almost perfectly arranged in word and phrase, ready to be
drawn off like the precipitation of a chemical in a jar. In all
this, he was precisely conforming to his life-long habit, which had
been to speak only when he had something to say and had delib-
erated how to say it. As he grew weaker, the amount of his dic-
tation slowly decreased, and at the last ceased altogether. His
work was done.

The book surprised the world by its dignity, clarity, and sim-
plicity of style. It displayed no attempt to be humorous, and
yet became so, with rare effect, at times. Its author did not at-
tempt to be picturesque, nor to magnify his importance on the
battle-field. He was dispassionate. If he criticised his fellows,
or his subordinates, he did so without anger and without envy.
He rewrote many parts of his story in order that he should not
do an injustice. He had no hatred of his enemies when he was
commander in the field, and he had none when he wrote the story
of his life.

406 AMERICAN PROSE

Grant always had very distinct limitations as a writer. He was
a bad speller, and occasionally he lost himself in loose grammati-
cah construction. He was at his worst whenever he attempted
congratulatory orders to his troops, and at his best when detailing
the movements of an army. There was something inexorable in
the swift march of his words at such times. His friends said:
" The book sounds like the general." His speech had always been
singularly plain ; even as a boy, he used straightforward Anglo-
Saxon words, without slang, without profanity, and almost without
dialectic peculiarities. Throughout his life he retained this purity
and simplicity of diction, and in his memoirs these qualities are
found raised to their highest power at a time when to express his
thought in any form was an agony requiring the greatest effort to
overcome.

These " personal memoirs " form a great book. It is not all
the work of General Grant's hand, but the best of it is his, and the
temper and tone of it are almost wholly his. The first volume is
entirely his own, and is the best, although it is not exactly in the
order in which it was written. It is a great book ; but after all it
fails, as any such book must, to express the Ufe of its author. It
expresses rather his attitude toward life. His natural reserve and
his habit of understatement would not allow him to tell the com-
plete story of his defeats, nor permit him to record his triumphs.
Naturally, the black shadows of the past are left out, as well as
the blazing high lights. No man can attain eminence such as his,
without suffering from the bitter enmity and savage criticism of
those who fancy themselves set aside or superseded. The book
is like him — dispassionate, even-tempered, expressing thought,
but never emotion. It is a great book, but it is not in any sense
the inner story of its author's life. It is merely the obvious, almost
the prosaic side of the life of one of the three preeminent men in
American history. The time has not yet come when the story of
his struggles and his triumphs can be fully told — probably it will
never be told.

Hamun Garland

ULYSSES S. GRANT 407

WOLVES AND POLITICIANS

When our party left Corpus Christ! it was quite large, includ-
ing the cavalry escort, Paymaster, Major Dix, his clerk, and the
officers who, like myself, were simply on leave; but all the
officers on leave, except Lieutenant Benjamin — afterwards killed
in the valley of Mexico — Lieutenant, now General, Augur, and
myself, concluded to spend their allotted time at San Antonio
and return from there. We were all to be back at Corpus Christi
by the end of the month. The paymaster was detained in Austin
so long that, if we had waited for him, we would have exceeded
our leave. We concluded, therefore, to start back at once with
the animals we had, and having to rely principally on grass for
their food, it was a good six days' journey. We had to sleep on
the prairie every night, except at Goliad, and possibly one night
on the Colorado, without shelter and with only such food as we
carried with us, and prepared ourselves. The journey was haz-
ardous on account of Indians, and there were white men in
Texas whom I would not have cared to meet in a secluded place.
Lieutenant Augur was taken seriously sick before we reached
Goliad and at a distance from any habitation. To add to the
complication, his horse — a mustang that had probably been cap-
tured from the band of wild horses before alluded to, and of un-
doubted longevity at his capture — gave out. It was absolutely
necessary to get forward to Goliad to find a shelter for our sick
companion. By dint of patience and exceedingly slow move-
ments, Goliad was at last reached, and a shelter and bed secured
for our patient. We remained over a day, hoping that Augur
might recover sufficiently to resume his travels. He did not,
however, and knowing that Major Dix would be along in a few
days with his wagon-train, now empty, and escort, we arranged
with our Louisiana friend to take the best of care of the sick
lieutenant until thus relieved, and went on.

I had never been a sportsman in my life; had scarcely ever
gone in search of game, and rarely seen any when looking for it.
On this trip there was no minute of time while travelling between
San Patricio and the settlements on the San Antonio River, from

408 AMERICAN PROSE

San Antonio to Austin, and again from the Colorado River back
to San Patricio, when deer or antelope could not be seen in great
numbers. Each officer carried a shot-gun, and every evening,
after going into camp, some would go out and soon return with
venison and wild turkeys enough for the entire camp. I, how-
ever, never went out, and had no occasion to fire my gun; except,
being detained over a day at Goliad, Benjamin and I concluded
to go down to the creek — which was fringed with timber, much
of it the pecan — and bring back a few turkeys. We had scarcely
reached the edge of the timber when I heard the flutter of wings
overhead, and in an instant I saw two or three turkeys flying
away. These were soon followed by more, then more, and more,
until a flock of twenty or thirty had left from just over my head.
All this time I stood watching the turkeys to see where they flew
— with my gun on my shoulder, and never once thought of level-
ling it at the birds. When I had time to reflect upon the matter,
I came to the conclusion that as a sportsman I was a failure, and
went back to the house. Benjamin remained out, and got as
many turkeys as he wanted to carry back.

After the second night at Goliad, Benjamin and I started to
make the remainder of the journey alone. We reached Corpus
Christi just in time to avoid "absence without leave." We met
no one — not even an Indian — during the remainder of our
journey, except at San Patricio. A new settlement had been
started there in our absence of three weeks, induced possibly by
the fact that there were houses already built, while the proximity
of troops gave protection against the Indians. On the evening
of the first day out from Goliad we heard the most unearthly
howling of wolves, directly in our front. The prairie grass was
tall and we could not see the beasts, but the sound indicated that
they were near. To my ear it appeared that there must have
been enough to devour our party, horses and all, at a single
meal. The part of Ohio that I hailed from was not thickly set-
tled, but wolves had been driven out long before I left. Ben-
jamin was from Indiana, still less populated, where the wolf yet
roamed over the prairies. He understood the nature of the ani-
mal and the capacity of a few to make believe there was an un-
limited number of them. He kept on towards the noise, unmoved.

ULYSSES S. GRANT 4O9

I followed in his trail, lacking moral courage to turn back and
join our sick companion. I have no doubt that if Benjamin had
proposed returning to Goliad, I would not only have "seconded
the motion " but have suggested that it was very hard-hearted in
us to leave Augur sick there in the first place; but Benjamin did
not propose turning back. When he did speak it was to ask :
"Grant, how many wolves do you think there are in that pack? "
Knowing where he was from, and suspecting that he thought I
would over-estimate the number, I determined to show my ac-
quaintance with the animal by putting the estimate below what
possibly could be correct, and answered: "Oh, about twenty,"
very indifferently. He smiled and rode on. In a minute we
were close upon them, and before they saw us. There were just
two of them. Seated upon their haunches, with their mouths
close together, they had made all the noise we had been hearing
for the past ten minutes. I have often thought of this incident
since when I have heard the noise of a few disappointed politi-
cians who had deserted their associates. There are always more
of them before they are counted.

[ Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant. Reprinted, by permission of The Century
Company, from vol. i, pp. 75-78.]

LEE'S SURRENDER

•

I was conducted at once to where Sheridan was located with
his troops drawn up in line of battle facing the Confederate army
near by. They were very much excited, and expressed their view
that this was all a ruse employed to enable the Confederates to
get away. They said they believed that Johnston was marching
from North Carolina now, and Lee was moving to join him; and
they would whip the rebels where they now were in five minutes
if I would only let them go in. But I had no doubt about the
good faith of Lee, and pretty soon was conducted to where he
was. I found him at the house of a Mr. McLean, at Appomattox
Court House, with Colonel Marshall, one of his staff officers,
awaiting my arrival. The head of his column was occupying a
hill, on a portion of which was an apple orchard, beyond a little

410 AMERICAN PROSE

valley which separated it from that on the crest of which Sheri
dan's forces were drawn up in line of battle to the south.

Before stating what took place between General Lee and my-
self, I will give all there is of the story of the famous apple
tree.

Wars produce many stories of fiction, some of which are told
until they are believed to be true. The war of the rebellion was
no exception to this rule, and the story of the apple tree is one
of those fictions based on a slight foundation of fact. As I have
said, there was an apple orchard on the side of the hill occupied
by the Confederate forces. Running diagonally up the hill was
a wagon road, which, at one point, ran very near one of the trees,
so that the wheels of the vehicles had, on that side, cut off the
roots of this tree, leaving a little embankment. General Bab-
cock, of my staff, reported to me that when he first met General
Lee he was sitting upon this embankment with his feet in the
road below and his back resting against the tree. The story had
no other foundation than that. Like many other stories, it would
be very good if it was only true.

I had known General Lee in the old army, and had served with
him in the Mexican War; but did not suppose, owing to the
difference in our age and rank, that he would remember me;
while I would more naturally remember him distinctly, because
he was the chief of staff of General Scott in the Mexican War.

When I left camp that morning I had not expected so soon the
result that was then taking place, and consequently was in rough
garb. I was without a sword, as I usually was when on horse-
back on the field, and wore a soldier's blouse for a coat, with
the shoulder straps of my rank to indicate to the army who I was.
When I went into the house I found General Lee. We greeted
each other, and after shaking hands took our seats. I had my
staff with me, a good portion of whom were in the room during
the whole of the interview.

What General Lee's feelings were I do not know. As he was
a man of much dignity, with an impassible face, it was impos-
sible to say whether he felt inwardly glad that the end had finally
come, or felt sad over the result, and was too manly to show it.
Whatever his feelings, they were entirely concealed from my ob-

ULYSSES S. GRANT 4II

servation; but my own feelings, which had been quite jubilant
on the receipt of his letter, were sad and depressed. I felt like
anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had
fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a
cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for
which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the
least excuse. I do not question, however, the sincerity of the
great mass of those who were opposed to us.

General Lee was dressed in a full uniform which was entirely
new, and was wearing a sword of considerable value, very likely
the sword which had been presented by the State of Virginia; at
all events, it was an entirely different sword from the one that
would ordinarily be worn in the field. In my rough traveling
suit, the uniform of a private with the straps of a lieutenant-gen-
eral, I must have contrasted very strangely with a man so hand-
somely dressed, six feet high and of faultless form. But this was
not a matter that I thought of until afterwards.

We soon fell into a conversation about old army times. He
remarked that he remembered me very well in the old army; and
I told him that as a matter of course I remembered him perfectly,
but from the difference in our rank and years (there being about
sixteen years* difference in our ages), I had thought it very likely
that I had not attracted his attention sufficiently to be remem-
bered by him after such a long interval. Our conversation grew
so pleasant that I almost forgot the object of our meeting. After
the conversation had run on in this style for some time, General
Lee called my attention to the object of our meeting, and said
that he had asked for this interview for the purpose of getting
from me the terms I proposed to give his army. I said that I
meant merely that his army should lay down their arms, not to
take them up again during the continuance of the war unless duly
and properly exchanged. He said that he had so understood my
letter.

Then we gradually fell off again into conversation about matters
foreign to the subject which had brought us together. This con-
tinued for some little time, when General Lee again interrupted
the course of the conversation by suggesting that the terms I pro-
posed to give his army ought to be written out. I called to Gen-

412 AMERICAN PROSE

eral Parker, secretary on my staff, for writing materials, and
commenced writing out the following terms: —

Appomattox C H., Va.,
April 9th, 1865.
Gen. R. E. Lee, ComtTg C. S. A.

Gen : — In accordance with the substance of my letter to you of
the 8th inst., I propose to receive the surrender of the Army of
N. Va. on the following terms, to wit: Rolls of all the officers
and men to be made in duplicate. One copy to be given to an
officer designated by me, the other to be retained by such officer
or officers as you may designate. The officers to give their indi-
vidual paroles not to take up arms against the Government of the
United States until properly exchanged, and each company or
regimental commander sign a like parole for the men of their
commands. The arms, artillery, and public property to be parked
and stacked, and turned over to the officer appointed by me to
receive them. This will not embrace the side arms of the
officers, nor their private horses or baggage. This done, each
officer and man will be allowed to return to their homes, not to
be disturbed by United States authority so long as they observe
their paroles and the laws in force where they may reside.

Very respectfully,

U. S. Grant, Z/. Gen.

When I put my pen to the paper I did not know the first word
that I should make use of in writing the terms. I only knew
what was in my mind, and I wished to express it clearly, so that
there could be no mistaking it. As I wrote on, the thought
occurred to me that the officers had their own private horses and
effects, which were important to them, but of no value to us;
also that it would be an unnecessary humiliation to call upon
them to deliver their side arms.

No conversation, not one word, passed between General Lee
and myself, either about private property, side arms, or kindred
subjects. He appeared to have no objections to the terms first
proposed; or if he had a point to make against them he wished

ULYSSES 5. GRANT 413

to wait until they were in writing to make it. When he read
over that part of the terms about side arms, horses and private
property of the officers, he remarked, with some feeling, I
thought, that this would have a happy effect upon his army.

Then, after a little further conversation. General Lee remarked
to me again that their army was organized a little differently from
the army of the United States (still maintaining by implication
that we were two countries) ; that in their army the cavalrymen
and artillerists owned their own horses; and he asked if he was
to understand that the men who so owned their horses were to
be permitted to retain them. I told him that as the terms were
written they would not; that only the officers were permitted to
take their private property. He then, after reading over the
terms a second time, remarked that that was clear.

I then said to him that I thought this would be about the last
battle of the war — I sincerely hoped so; and I said further I
took it that most of the men in the ranks were small farmers.
The whole country had been so raided by the two armies that it
was doubtful whether they would be able to put in a crop to carry
themselves and their families through the next winter without
the aid of the horses they were then riding. The United States
did not want them and I would, therefore, instruct the officers I
left behind to receive the paroles of his troops to let every man
of the Confederate army who claimed to own a horse or mule
take the animal to his home. Lee remarked again that this
would have a happy effect.

He then sat down and wrote out the following letter :

Headquarters Army of Northern Virginia,

April 9, 1865.

General: — I received your letter of this date containing the
terms of the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia as pro-
posed by you. As they are substantially the same as those ex-
pressed in your letter of the 8th inst., they are accepted. I will
proceed to designate the proper officers to carry the stipulations

into effect.

R. E. Lee, General.
Lieut. -General U. S. Grant.

414 AMERICAN PROSE

While duplicates of the two letters were being made, the Union
generals present were severally presented to General Lee.

The much talked of surrendering of Lee's sword and my hand-
ing it back, this and much more that has been said about it is the
purest romance. The word sword or side arms was not mentioned
by either of us until I wrote it in the terms. There was no pre-
meditation, and it did not occur to me until the moment I wrote it
down. If I had happened to omit it, and General Lee had called
my attention to it, I should have put it in the terms precisely as I
acceded to the provision about the soldiers retaining their horses.

General Lee, after all was completed and before taking his
leave, remarked that his army was in a very bad condition for
want of food, and that they were without forage; that his men
had been living for some days on parched corn exclusively, and
that he would have to ask me for rations and forage. I told him
"certainly," and asked for how many men he wanted rations.
His answer was " about twenty-five thousand : " and I authorized
him to send his own commissary and quartermaster to Appomattox
Station, two or three miles away, where he could have, out of the
trains we had stopped, all the provisions wanted. As for forage, we
had ourselves depended almost entirely upon the country for that

Generals Gibbon, Griffin and Merritt were designated by me
to carry into effect the paroling of Lee's troops before they should
start for their homes — General Lee leaving Generals Longstreet,
Gordon and Pendleton for them to confer with in order to facili-
tate this work. Lee and I then separated as cordially as we had
met, he returning to his own lines, and all went into bivouac for
the night at Appomattox.

Soon after Lee's departure I telegraphed to Washington as

follows : —

Headquarters Appomattox C. H., Va.,
April 9th, 1865, 4.50 P.M.

Hon. E. M. Stanton, Secretary of War,

Washington.

General Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia this
afternoon on terms proposed by myself. The accompanying
additional correspondence will show the conditions fully.

U. S. Grant, LieuU- General.

ULYSSES S. GRANT 415

When the news of the surrender first reached our lines our men
commenced firing a salute of a hundred guns in honor of the
victory. I at once sent word, however, to have it stopped. The
Confederates were now our prisoners, and we did not want to
exult over their downfall.

I determined to return to Washington at once, with a view to
putting a stop to the purchase of supplies, and what I now deemed
other useless outlay of money. Before leaving, however, I
thought I would like to see General Lee again; so next morning
I rode out beyond our lines towards his headquarters, preceded
by a bugler and a staff-officer carrying a white flag.

Lee soon mounted his horse, seeing who it was, and met me.
We had there between the lines, sitting on horseback, a very
pleasant conversation of over half an hour, in the course of which
Lee said to me that the South was a big country, and that we might
have to march over it three or four times before the war entirely
ended, but that we would now be able to do it as they could no
longer resist us. He expressed it as his earnest hope, however,
that we would not be called upon to cause more loss and sacrifice
of life; but he could not foretell the result. I then suggested to
General Lee that there was not a man in the Confederacy whose
influence with the soldiery and the whole people was as great as
his, and that if he would now advise the surrender of all the
armies I had no doubt his advice would be followed with alacrity.
But Lee said, that he could not do that without consulting the
President first. I knew there was no use to urge him to do any-
thing against his ideas of what was right.

I was accompanied by my staff and other officers, some of
whom seemed to have a great desire to go inside the Confederate
lines. They finally asked permission of Lee to do so for the pur-
pose of seeing some of their old army friends, and the permis-
sion was granted. They went over, had a very pleasant time with
their old friends, and brought some of them back with them
when they returned.

When Lee and I separated he went back to his lines and I re-
turned to the house of Mr. McLean. Here the officers of both
armies came in great numbers, and seemed to enjoy the meeting
as much as though they had been friends separated for a long time

4l6 AMERICAN PROSE

while fighting battles under the same flag. For the time being it
looked very much as if all thought of the war had escaped their
minds. After an hour pleasantly passed in this way I set out on
horseback, accompanied by my staff and a small escort, for Burkes-
ville Junction, up to which point the railroad had by this time
been repaired.

[From Personal Memoirs, vol. ii, chapter 67. Reprinted by permission of
The Century Company.]

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS

[George William Curtis was born in Providence, RJ., Feb. 24, 1824.
He was sent to school at Jamaica Plain, near Boston, but had afterwards
no academic training. In 1839 his family removed to New York, where he
lived till 1842. He early satisfied a wish he had for a simple, useful life by
working on a farm in New England, and he was for some time a member of
the famous Brook Farm Community. In 1846 he went abroad, and travelled
in Europe and the East for three or four years, returning home in 1850. Two
years later he became the editor of Putnani's Magazine^ and on giving up that
periodical he took the department of the Easy Chair in Harper*s Monthly^
which he continued to write till the time of his death. He entered public life
in 1855, and became known throughout the country as a political writer and
speaker; he was already active and popular as a lecturer. He refused several
places of honor abroad, but accepted from Grant the appointment of Chair-
man of the Civil Service Commission, which owed to him its first efficiency
in the cause of political reform. Up to the time of Blaine's nomination for
the presidency he was a Republican ; but after that, though he supported Gar-
field, he was independent of party ties. He died at West New Brighton,
Staten Island, Aug. 31, 1892.

The following are the names and dates of Curtis^s principal works : Nile
Notes of a Hoivadji (1851), The Howadji in Syria (1852), The PoHphar
Papers (1853), Prue and I (1856), Trumps (1861). Etdogy on Wendell
Phillips (1884), three series of essays From the Easy Chair (1892, 1893,
1 894) , and James Russell Lowell ( 1 892) . His Orations and Addresses^ edited
by Charles Eliot Norton, appeared in 1893-94. His biography has been
written by Edward Cary (1895).]

When time shall have got him in the right perspective, few of
our writers will show as distinct and continuous a purpose, as
direct a growth from a very definite impulse, as George William
Curtis. The impulse seemed to exhaust itself at a certain moment
of his career, but perhaps it was only included and carried forward
in the larger and stronger impulse which made the witness of the
effect forget the aesthetic quality in the ethical tendency. His
intellectual Hfe was really of a singular unity. The moral force which
2E 417

41 8 AMERICAN PROSE

ultimately prevailed was always present in the earlier charm ; and
the grace which his strenuousness kept to the end was as in-
alienably his. He was both artist and moralist from the beginning
to the end of his work. He could not help trying for literary
beauty in his political writings, in his appeal to the civic sense of
his countrymen ; he could not forbear to remind himself and his
reader of higher things when he seemed rapt in the joy of art.

He was of Massachusetts stock, but it was not for nothing that
he was born in Rhode Island. He embodied in literature that
transition from New England to New York which his state repre-
sents in our civilization. The influences that shaped his mind and
character, that kindled his sympathies and inspired his ideals,
were New England influences ; the circumstances which attracted
his energies and formed his opportunities were New York circum-
stances. He began to write when what has been called, for want
of some closer phrase, the Knickerbocker school had shrunken
through the waning activity of Irving and the evanescence of Poe
to little more than the tradition which it remains, and when the
great Boston group of poets and thinkers was in its glory, when
Hawthorne, Emerson, Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell, Holmes,
Prescott, Ticknor, Motley, Parkman, and Phillips were establishing
such claim as we had to literary standing before the world. Yet
he did not write like the Bostonians, in spite of his inherent and
instinctive ethicism. He was not Puritanic, either in revolt or in
acquiescence ; he was not provincial in the good way or in the bad
way, in the way of Athens, and Florence, and Paris, as the Bosto-
nians sometimes were, or in the way of Little Peddlington, as they
sometimes were. He was like the finest and greatest of them in
their enlargement to the measure of humanity, though he was not
liberated from what is poor and selfish and personal by anything
cosmopolitan in his environment, but by his disgust with its social
meanness and narrowness. What " our best society " in New York
was in 1858, the best society in 1898 can perhaps hardly imagine ;
but the most interesting fact of that period was the evolution of
a great public spirit from conditions fatal to poorer natures.

A great public spirit was what Curtis was : at first tentatively
and falteringly, and then more and more voluntarily and fully.
After he once came to his civic consciousness, he could not con-

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 419

tent himself with sterile satire of New York society, with breaking
butterflies or even more vicious insects upon wheels ; he must do
something, become something ; he must hve a protest against
triviality and vulgarity, and he chose to do this on the American
scale. It was not till he had written TTie Potiphar Papers that he
dedicated himself to humanity in the anti-slavery reform, and
thereafter to the purification of our practical politics. But he had
the root of the matter always in him : it germinated far back in
his past, when as a young man he joined the Brook Farm Commu-
nity and dreamed, in the sweat of his brow and the work of his
hands, of the day when economic equality and the social justice
which nothing less implies, should rule among men. There are no
miracles in character, and what took the literary world with surprise
and sorrow when Curtis left the study for the stump was the sim-
plest possible effect of growth, an effect wholly to be expected
and hardly to have been avoided.

His two books of Eastern travel, Nile Notes of a Howadji, and
The Howadji in Syria, followed each other in 185 1 and 1852,
and first sounded the American note which has since been heard
in so many agreeable books of travel. They were joyous dances
of tints and lights, in great part ; they were even more choreo-
graphic than musical, though they were written from an ear that
sympathetically sought the concord of sweet sounds, and with a
skill that almost cloyingly reported it. They give a picture of the
pleasing lands of " drowsihed " through which they lead by color
rather than by drawing, but the picture is not less true, for all that,
and it is not less a work of art because it is at times so purely deco-
rative. Long before impressionism had a name, Curtis*s studies of
travel were impressionistic ; and one is sensible of something like
this, not only in the Howadji pages, but in the more conscious
effort, Lotus-Eating, a Summer Book, which treated of American
watering-places, and tried to divine the poetry of our summer
idhng.

This appeared in 1852, and was followed in 1854 by The
Potiphar Papers, which satirized the vices and follies of the self-
called best society of New York. The lash was laid on with
rather a heavy hand, which was artistically a mistake and morally
useless, since it could not penetrate the thick skin it scourged ,-

420 AMERICAN PROSE

but probably the fact was not caricatured in the satire. The next

book was that group of tender and winning studies in the ideal,

Prue and I, from which a characteristic passage follows. They were

reprinted in 1856 from Putnam's Magazine^ which Curtis edited,

and in which they had won lasting favor. They form undoubtedly

his most popular book ; with many of his own generation it is not

too much to say that they were beloved. They expressed something

better than a mood ; they were conceived in a love of beauty and

expressed in a love of humanity ; they are very sentimental, but

they are never insincere ; the worst that can be said of them is

that they are weakened by the tendency to allegory which was

always the danger of the author's imagination, but this was their

condition. His last fiction was Trumps, a novel, published in

1 86 1, which promptly, and it appears finally, failed of a public.

After that Curtis wrote the graceful and gracious, humanizing,

civilizing papers of the Easy Chair in Harper^ s Monthly, He had

already made his mark as an orator on the anti-slavery side of

politics ; he touched widely on various topics in these pages for

ten or twelve years; he took an active part in all patriotic

interests as long as he lived ; the Civil Service Reform he may be

said almost to have created.

William Dean Howells

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 42 1

THE DUTY OF THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

Do you ask me our duty as scholars? Gentlemen, thought,
which the scholar represents, is life and liberty. There is no
intellectual or moral life without liberty. Therefore, as a man
must breathe and see before he can study, the scholar must have
liberty, first of all ; and as the American scholar is a man and has
a voice in his own government, so his interest in political affairs
must precede all others. He must build his house before he can
live in it. He must be a perpetual inspiration of freedom in
politics. He must recognize that the intelligent exercise of politi-
cal rights which is a privilege in a monarchy, is a duty in a republic.
If it clash with his ease, his retirement, his taste, his study, let it
clash, but let him do his duty. The course of events is incessant,
and when the good deed is slighted, the bad deed is done.

Young scholars, young Americans, young men, we are all called
upon to do a great duty. Nobody is released from it. It is a
work to be done by hard strokes, and everywhere. I see a rising
enthusiasm, but enthusiasm is not an election ; and I hear cheers
from the heart, but cheers are not votes. Every man must labor
with his neighbor — in the street, at the plough, at the bench, early
and late, at home and abroad. Generally we are concerned, in
elections, with the measures of government. This time it is with
the essential principle of government itself. Therefore there must
be no doubt about our leader. He must not prevaricate, or stand
in the fog, or use terms to court popular favor, which every dema-
gogue and traitor has always used. If he says he favors the in-
terest of the whole country, let him frankly say whether he thinks
the interest of the whole country demands the extension of slavery.
If he declares for the Union, let him say whether he means a
Union for freedom or for slavery. If he swear by the Constitution,
let him state, so that the humblest free laborer can hear and under-
stand, whether he believes the Constitution means to prefer slave
labor to free labor in the national representation of the Territories.
Ask him as an honest man, in a great crisis, if he be for the Union,
the Constitution, and slavery extension, or for " Z/'^^r/^ and union,
now and forever, one and inseparable."

422 AMERICAN PROSE

Scholars, you would like to loiter in the pleasant paths of study.
Every man loves his ease — loves to please his taste. But into how
many homes along this lovely valley came the news of Lexington
and Bunker Hill eighty years ago ; and young men like us, studi-
ous, fond of leisure, young lovers, young husbands, young brothers,
and sons, knew that they must forsake the wooded hillside, the
river meadows golden with harvest, the twilight walk along the
river, the summer Sunday in the old church, parents, wife, child,
mistress, and go away to uncertain war. Putnam heard the call at
his plough, and turned to go without waiting. Wooster heard it
and obeyed.

Not less lovely in those days was this peaceful valley, not less
soft this summer air. Life was as dear, and love as beautiful, to
those young men as to us who stand upon their graves. But be-
cause they were so dear and beautiful those men went out, bravely
to fight for them and fall. Through these very streets they marched,
who never returned. They fell and were buried ; but they can never
die. Not sweeter are the flowers that make your valley fair, not
greener are the pines that give your river its name, than the memory
of the brave men who died for freedom. And yet no victim of
those days, sleeping under the green sod of Connecticut, is more
truly a martyr of Liberty than every murdered man whose bones
lie bleaching in this summer sun upon the silent plains of Kansas.

Gentlemen, while we read history we make history. Because
our fathers fought in this great cause, we must nof hope to escape
fighting. Because two thousand years ago Leonidas stood against
Xerxes, we must not suppose that Xerxes was slain, nor, thank
God ! that Leonidas is not immortal. Every great crisis of human
history is a pass of Thermopylae, and there is always a Leonidas
and his three hundred to die in it, if they cannot conquer. And
so long as Liberty has one martyr, so long as^ one drop of blood is
poured out for her, so long from that single drop of bloody sweat
of the agony of humanity shall spring hosts as countless as the
forest leaves and mighty as the sea.

Brothers ! the call has come to us. I bring it to you in these
calm retreats. I summon you to the great fight of Freedom. I
call upon you to say with your voices, whenever the occasion
offers, and with your votes when the day comes, that upon these

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 423

fertile fields of Kansas, in the very heart of the continent, the
upas-tree of slavery, dripping death-dews upon national prosperity
and upon free labor, shall never be planted. I call upon you to
plant there the palm of peace, the vine and the olive of a- Chris-
tian civilization. I call upon you to determine whether this great
experiment of human freedom, which has been the scorn of des-
potism, shall, by its failure, be also our sin and shame. I call
upon you to defend the hope of the world.

The voice of our brothers who are bleeding, no less than of our
fathers who bled, summons us to this battle. Shall the children
of unborn generations, clustering over that vast western empire,
rise up and call us blessed or cursed ? Here are our Marathon
and Lexington ; here are our heroic fields. The hearts of all
good men beat with us. The fight is fierce -»- the issue is with
God. But God is good.

[From The Duty of the American Scholar to Politics and the Times, — an
oration delivered before the literary societies of Wesleyan University, Middle-
town, Conn., August 5, 1856, and republished in pamplet form in the same
year. It is also included in Orations and Addresses, 1 894, Harper and
Brothers, vol. i. The text is that of the original publication.]

TITBOTTOM'S GRANDFATHER

" You know my grandfather Titbottom was a West Indian. A
large proprietor, and an easy man, he basked in the tropical sun,
leading his quiet, luxurious Ufe. He lived much alone, and was
what people call eccentric, by which I understand that he was
very much himself, and, refusing the influence of other people,
they had their little revenges, and called him names. It is a habit
not exclusively tropical. I think I have seen the same thing even
in this city. But he was greatly beloved — my bland and bounti-
ful grandfather. He was so large-hearted, and open-handed. He
was so friendly, and thoughtful, and genial, that even his jokes
had the air of graceful benedictions. He did not seem to grow
old, and he was one of those who never appear to have been
very young. He flourished in a perennial maturity, an immortal
middle-age.

" My grandfather lived upon one of the small islands, St. Kittys,
perhaps, and his domain extended to the sea. His house, a

424 AMERICAN PROSE

rambling West Indian mansion, was surrounded with deep, spa-
cious piazzas, covered with luxurious lounges, among which one
capacious chair was his peculiar seat. They tell me he used some-
times to sit there for the whole day, his great, soft, brown eyes
fastened upon the sea, watching the specks of sails that flashed
upon the horizon, while the evanescent expressions chased each
other over his placid face, as if it reflected the calm and changing
sea before him. His morning costume was an ample dressing-
gown of gorgeously flowered silk, and his morning was very apt to
last all day. He rarely read, but he would pace the great piazza
for hours, with his hands sunken in the pockets of his dressing-
gown, and an air of sweet reverie, which any author might be
very happy to produce.

"Society, of course, he saw little. There was some slight
apprehension that if he were bidden to social entertainments, he
might forget his coat, or arrive without some other essential part
of his dress ; and there is a sly tradition in the Titbottom family,
that, having been invited to a ball in honor of the new governor
of the island, my grandfather Titbottom sauntered into the hall
towards midnight, wrapped in the gorgeous flowers of his dressing-
gown, and with his hands buried in the pockets, as usual. There
was great excitement among the guests, and immense deprecation
of gubernatorial ire. But it happened that the governor and my
grandfather were old friends, and there was no offence. But as
they were conversing together, one of the distressed managers cast
indignant glances at the brilliant costume of my grandfather, who
summoned him, and asked courteously :

" ' Did you invite me, or my coat ? '

" * You, in a proper coat,* replied the manager.

"The governor smiled approvingly, and looked at my grand-
father.

" * My friend,* said he to the manager, ' I beg your pardon, I
forgot'

" The next day, my grandfather was seen promenading in full
ball dress along the streets of the little town.

" * They ought to know,* said he, * that I have a proper coat,
and that not contempt nor poverty, but forgetfulness, sent me to a
ball in my dressing-gown.*

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 425

** He did not much frequent social festivals after this failure, but
he always told the story with satisfaction and a quiet smile.

" To a stranger, life upon those little islands is uniform even to
weariness. But the old native dons like my grandfather, ripen in
the prolonged sunshine, like the turtle upon the Bahama banks, nor
know of existence more desirable. Life in the tropics, I take to
be a placid torpidity. During the long warm mornings of nearly
half a century, my grandfather Titbottom had sat in his dressing-
gown, and gazed at the sea. But one calm June day, as he slowly
paced the piazza after breakfast, his dreamy glance was arrested by
a little vessel, evidently nearing the shore. He called for his spy-
glass, and surveying the craft, saw that she came from the neighbor-
ing island. She glided smoothly, slowly, over the summer sea. The
warm morning air was sweet with perfumes, and silent with heat.
The sea sparkled languidly, and the brilliant blue sky hung cloud-
lessly over. Scores of little island vessels had my grandfather seen
come over the horizon, and cast anchor in the port. Hundreds of
summer mornings had the white sails flashed and faded, like vague
faces through forgotten dreams. But this time he laid down the
spyglass, and leaned against a column of the piazza, and watched
the vessel with an intentness that he could not explain. She
came nearer and nearer, a graceful spectre in the dazzling morning.

" ' Decidedly, I must step down and see about that vessel,* said
my grandfather Titbottom.

" He gathered his ample dressing-gown about him, and stepped
from the piazza with no other protection from the sun than the
little smoking-cap upon his head. His face wore a calm beaming
smile, as if he approved of all the world. He was not an old man,
but there was almost a patriarchal pathos in his expression as he
sauntered along in the sunshine towards the shore. A group of
idle gazers was collected to watch the arrival. The little vessel
furled her sails and drifted slowly landward, and as she was of
very light draft, she came close to the shelving shore. A long
plank was put out from her side, and the debarkation commenced.
My grandfather Titbottom stood looking on to see the passengers
as they passed. There were but a few of them, and mostly traders
from the neighboring island. But suddenly the face of a young
girl appeared over the side of the vessel, and she stepped upon

426 AMERICAN PROSE

the plank to descend. My grandfather Titboltom instantly ad-
vanced, and moving briskly reached the top of the p>lank at the
same moment, and with the old tassel of his cap flashing in the sun,
and one hand in the pocket of his dressing-gown, with the other
he handed the young lady carefully down the plank. That young
lady was afterwards my grandmother Titbottom.

" And so, over the gleaming sea which he had watched so long,
and which seemed thus to reward his patient gaze, came his bride
that sunny morning.

" ' Of course we are happy,* he used to say : * For you are the
gift of the sun I have loved so long and so well.' And my grand-
father Titbottom would lay his hand so tenderly upon the golden
hair of his young bride, that you could fancy him a devout Parsee
caressing sunbeams.

" There were endless festivities upon occasion of the marriage ;
and my grandfather did not go to one of them in his dressing-
gown. The gentle sweetness of his wife melted every heart into
love and sympathy. He was much older than she, without doubt.
But age, as he used to say with a smile of immortal youth, is a
matter of feeling, not of years. And if, sometimes, as she sat by
his side on the piazza, her fancy looked through her eyes upon
that summer sea and saw a younger lover, perhaps some one of
those graceful and glowing heroes who occupy the foreground of
all young maidens' visions by the sea, yet she could not find one
more generous and gracious, nor fancy one more worthy and lov-
ing than my grandfather Titbottom. And if, in the moonlit mid-
night, while he lay calmly sleeping, she leaned out of the window
and sank into vague reveries of sweet possibility, and watched the
gleaming path of the moonlight upon the water, until the dawn
glided over it — it was only that mood of nameless regret and
longing, which underlies all human happiness, or it was the vision
of that life of society, which she had never seen, but of which she
had often read, and which looked very fair and alluring across
the sea to a girlish imagination, which knew that it should never
know that reality.

[From l^itbottom^s Spectacles^ in Putnam's Magazine^ December, 1854; after-
wards included in Prue and I, 1856, Harper and Brothers. The text u that

of the original article.]

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 427

THE PURITAN SPIRIT

When Elizabeth died, the country gentlemen, the great traders
in the towns, the sturdy steadfast middle class, the class from
which English character and strength have sprung, were chiefly
Puritans. Puritans taught in the universities and sat on the
thrones of bishops. They were Peers in Parliament, they were
Ambassadors and Secretaries of State. Hutchinson, graced with
every accomplishment of the English gentleman, was a Puritan.
Sir Henry Vane, by whose side sat justice, was a Puritan. John
Hampden, purest of patriots, was a Puritan. John Pym, greatest
of parliamentary leaders, was a Puritan. A fanatic? Yes, in the
high sense of unchangeable fidelity to a sublime idea ; — a fanatic
like Columbus, sure of a western passage to India over a myste-
rious ocean which no mariner had ever sailed ; — a fanatic like Gali-
leo, who marked the courses of the stars and saw, despite the
jargon of authority, that still the earth moved ; — a fanatic like
Joseph Warren, whom the glory of patriotism transfigures upon
Bunker Hill. This was the fanatic who read the Bible to the
English people and quickened English life with the fire of the
primeval faith; who smote the Spaniard and swept the pirates
from the sea, and rode with Cromwell and his Ironsides, praising
God ; who to the utmost shores of the Mediterranean, and in the
shuddering valleys of Piedmont, to every religious oppressor and
foe of England made the name of England terrible. This was
the fanatic, soft as sunshine in the young Milton, blasting in Crom-
well as the thunder- bolt, in Endicott austere as Calvin, in Roger
Williams benign as Melanchthon, in John Robinson foreseeing
more truth to break forth from God*s word. In all history do
you see a nobler figure? Forth from the morning of Greece come,
Leonidas, with your bravest of the brave, — in the rapt city plead,
Demosthenes, your country's cause, — pluck, Gracchus, from
aristocratic Rome its crown, — speak, Cicero, your magic word, —
lift, Cato, your admonishing hand, — and you, patriots of modem
Europe, be all gratefully remembered ; — but where in the earlier
ages, in the later day, in lands remote or near, shall we find
loftier self-sacrifice, more unstained devotion to worthier ends,

428 AMERICAN PROSE

issuing in happier results to the highest interests of man, than in
the English Puritan ?

He apprehended his own principle, indeed, often blindly, often
narrowly, never in its utmost amplitude and splendor. The his-
toric Puritan was a man of the seventeenth century, not of the
nineteenth. He saw through a -glass darkly, but he saw. The
acorn is not yet the oak, the well-spring is not yet the river. But
as the harvest is folded in the seed, so the largest freedom political
and religious, — liberty, not toleration, not permission, not endur-
ance — in yonder heaven Cassiopeia does not tolerate Arcturus
nor the clustered Pleiades permit Orion to shine — the right of
absolute individual liberty, subject only to the equal right of
others, is the ripened fruit of the Puritan principle.

It is this fact, none the less majestic because he was unconscious
of it, which invests the emigration of the Puritan to this country
with a dignity and grandeur that belong to no other colonization.
In unfurling his sail for that momentous voyage he was impelled
by no passion of discovery, no greed of trade, no purpose of con-
quest. He was the most practical, the least romantic of men,
but he was allured by no vision of worldly success. The winds
that blew the Mayflower over the sea were not more truly airs
from heaven than the moral impulse and moral heroism which
inspired her voyage. Sebastian Cabot, Sir Walter Raleigh, Fran-
cis Drake and Frobisher, Cortez and Ponce de Leon, Champlain,
bearing southward from the St. Lawrence the lilies of France,
Henry Hudson pressing northward from Sandy Hook with the
flag of Holland, sought mines of gold, a profitable trade, the foun-
tain of youth, colonial empire, the northwestern passage, a shorter
channel to Cathay. But the Puritan obeyed solely the highest of
all human motives. He dared all that men have ever dared, seek-
ing only freedom to worship God. Had the story of the Puritan
ended with the landing upon Plymouth Rock, — had the rigors of
that first winter which swept away half of the Pilgrims obliterated
every trace of the settlement, — had the unnoted Mayflower sunk
at sea, — still the Puritan story would have been one of the noblest
in the annals of the human race. But it was happily developed
into larger results, and the Puritan, changed with the changing
time, adding sweetness to strength, and a broader humanity to

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 429

moral conviction and religious earaestness, was reserved for a
grander destiny.

The Puritan came to America seeking freedom to worship God.
He meant only freedom to worship God in his own way, not in
the Quaker way, not in the Baptist way, not in the Church of
England way. But the seed that he brought was immortal. His
purpose was to feed with it his own barnyard fowl, but it quick-
ened into an illimitable forest covering a continent with grateful
shade, the home of every bird that flies. Freedom to worship
God is universal freedom, a free state as well as a free church,
and that was the inexorable but unconscious logic of Puritanism.
Holding that the true rule of religious faith and worship was
written in the Bible, and that every man must read and judge for
himself, the Puritan conceived the church as a body of indepen-
dent seekers and interpreters of the truth, dispensing with priests
and priestly orders and functions ; organizing itself and calling no
man master. But this sense of equality before God and towards
each other in the religious congregation, affecting and adjusting
the highest and most enduring of all human relations, that of man
to his Maker, applied itself instinctively to the relation of man to
man in human society, and thus popular government flowed out
of the Reformation, and the Republic became the natural political
expression of Puritanism.

See, also, how the course and circumstance of the Puritan story
had confirmed this tendency. The earliest English reformers,
flying from the fierce reaction of Mary, sought freedom in the im-
memorial abode of freedom, Switzerland, whose singing waterfalls
and ranz des vaches echoing among peaks of eternal ice and shad-
owy valleys of gentleness and repose, murmured ever the story of
Morgarten and Sempach, the oath of the men of RUtli, the daring
of William Tell, the greater revolt of Zwingli. There was Geneva,
the stern republic of the Reformation, and every Alpine canton
was a republican community lifted high for all men to see, a light
set upon a hill. How beautiful upon the mountains were the
heralds of glad tidings ! This vision of the free state lingered in
the Puritan mind. It passed in tradition from sire to son, and
the dwellers in Amsterdam and Leyden, maintaining a republican
Church, unconsciously became that republican state whose living

430 AMERICAN PROSE

beauty their fathers had beheld, and which they saw glorified,
dimly and afar, in the old Alpine vision.

Banished, moreover, by the pitiless English persecution, the
Puritans, exiles and poor in a foreign land, a colony in Holland
before they were a colony in America, were compelled to self-gov-
ernment, to a common sympathy and support, to bearing one
another's burdens ; and so, by the stern experience of actual life,
they were trained in the virtues most essential for the fulfilment
of their august but unimagined destiny. The patriots of the Con-
tinental Congress seemed to Lord Chatham imposing beyond the
law-givers of Greece and Rome. The Constitutional Convention
a hundred years ago was an assembly so wise that its accomplished
work is reverently received by continuous generations, as the chil-
dren of Israel received the tables of the law which Moses brought
down from the Holy Mount. Happy, thrice happy the people
which to such scenes in their history can add the simple grandeur
of the spectacle in the cabin of the Mayflower, the Puritans sign-
ing the compact which was but the formal expression of the gov-
ernment that voluntarily they had established — the scene which
makes Plymouth Rock a stepping-stone from the freedom of the
solitary Alps and the disputed liberties of England to the fiilly
developed constitutional and well-ordered republic of the United
States.

The history of colonial New England and of New England in
the Union is the story of the influence of the Puritan in America.
That is a theme too alluring to neglect, too vast to be attempted
now. But even in passing I must not urge a claim too broad.
Even in the pride of this hour, and with the consent of your
approving conviction and sympathy, I must not proclaim that the
republic like a conquering goddess sprang from the head fully
armed, and that the head was New England. Yet the imperial
commonwealth of which we are citizens, and every sister-State,
will agree that in the two great periods of our history, the colonial
epoch and that of the national union, the influence of New Eng-
land has not been the least of all influences in the formative and
achieving processes towards the great and common result* The
fondly cherished tradition of Hadley may be doubted and dis-
proved, but like the legends of the old mythology it will live on,

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 43 1

glowing and palpitating with essential truth. It may be that we
must surrender the story of the villagers upon the Connecticut
sorely beset by Indians at mid-day and about to yield ; perhaps
no actual, venerable form appears with flowing hair, — like that
white plume of conquering Navarre, — and with martial mien and
voice of command rallies the despairing band, cheering them on
to victory, then vanishing in air. The heroic legend may be a
fable, but none the less it is the Puritan who marches in the van
of our characteristic history, it is the subtle and penetrating in-
fluence of New England which has been felt in every part of our
national life, as the cool wind blowing from her pine-clad moun-
tains breathes a loftier inspiration, a health more vigorous, a
fresher impulse, upon her own green valleys and happy fields.
See how she has diffused her population. Like the old statues
of the Danube and the Nile, figures reclining upon a reedy shore
and from exhaustless urns pouring water which flows abroad in a
thousand streams of benediction, so has New England sent forth
her children. Following the sun westward, across the Hudson
and the Mohawk and the Susquehanna, over the AUeghanies into
the valley of the Mississippi, over the Sierra Nevada to the Pacific
Ocean, the endless procession from New England has moved for
a century, bearing everywhere Puritan principle, Puritan enter-
prise, and Puritan thrift. A hundred years ago New-Englanders
passed beyond the calm Dutch Arcadia upon the Mohawk, and
striking into the primeval forest of the ancient Iroquois domain
began the settlement of central New York. A little later, upon
the Genesee, settlers from Maryland and Pennsylvania met, but
the pioneers from New England took the firmest hold and left the
deepest and most permanent impression. A hundred years ago
there was no white settlement in Ohio. But in 1789 the seed of
Ohio was carried from Massachusetts, and from the loins of the
great Eastern commonwealth sprang the first great commonwealth
of the West. Early in the century a score of settlements beyond
the AUeghanies bore the name of Salem, the spot where first in
America the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay set foot ; and in the
dawn of the Revolution the hunters in the remote valley of the
Elkhorn, hearing the news of the 19th of April, called their camp
Lexington, and thus, in the response of their heroic sympathy, the

432 AMERICAN PROSE

Puritan of New England named the early capital of Kentucky.
But happier still, while yet the great region of the Northwest lay
in primeval wilderness awaiting the creative touch that should lift
it into civilization, it was the Puritan instinct which fulfilled the
aspiration of Jefferson, and by the Ordinance of 1787 consecrated
the Northwest to freedom. So in the civilization of the country
has New England been a pioneer, and so deeply upon American
life and institutions has the genius of New England impressed
itself that in the great civil war the peculiar name of the New-
Englander, the Yankee, became the distinguishing title of the
soldier of the Union ; the national cause was the Yankee cause ;
and a son of the West, bom in Kentucky and a citizen of Illinois,
who had never seen New England twice in his life, became the
chief representative Yankee, and with his hand, strong with the
will of the people, the Puritan principle of liberty and equal rights
broke the chains of a race. New England characteristics have
become national qualities. The blood of New England flows with
energizing, modifying, progressive power in the veins of every
State ; and the undaunted spirit of the Puritan, sic semper tyrannis,
animates the continent from sea to sea.

[From an oration delivered at the unveiling of a bronze statae of the ** Pil-
grim," in Central Park, New York City, June 6, 1885. Printed in UnveiHng
of the Pilgrim Statue by the New England Society in the City of New York,
Afterwards included in Orations and Addresses, Harper and Brothers, 1894,
vol. i. The text is that of the original publication.]

FRANCIS PARKMAN

[Francis Parkman was born in Boston, Sept. 16, 1823, and died at bia
country house in Jamaica Plain, one of the suburbs of Boston, Nov. 8, 1893.
His ancestors had for several generations been honorably known in Massa-
chusetts. Much of Francis Parkman's early life was spent in the woods.
The home of his maternal grandfather, Nathaniel Hall of Medford, was
situated on the border of the Middlesex Fells, a superb piece of wild and
savage woodland, 4000 acres in extent, within eight miles of Boston. As
the boy's health was not robust, he was allowed to spend much of his time
in this enchanting solitude, and learned there the craft of huntsman and
trapper. He was graduated at Harvard in 1844, with high rank. While
in college he spent several months in a journey in Europe, and afterward,
in 1846, he travelled in the Rocky Mountain region, in what was then a
howling wilderness, and lived for some time in a village of Sioux Indians of
the Ogillalah tribe, whose acquaintance with white men was but slight. A
graphic account of this wild experience was given in Parkman's first book.

The Oregon Trails published in 1 847. Some time afterward he published a
historical novel, Vassall Morton^ which had not much success. In 185 1 he
published the first of his great series of histories. The Conspiracy ofPontiac,
This remarkable book, though the first to be published, was in its subject
the last of the series to which it belongs, and which, with their dates of publi-
cation, are as follows: Pioneers of France in the New IVor/d (^iS6$), The
Jesuits in North America (1867), La Salle and the Discovery of the Great

West (1869), The Old Regime in Canada (1874), Count Frontenac and New
France under Louis XIV. (1877), A Half Century of Conflict (1892), Mont-
calm and Wolfe (1884). It will be observed that the last-named work, the
climax of the series, was completed before the less important one which pre-
cedes it.

Mr. Parkmpn was eminent in the culture of roses, and author of a work
entitled The Book of Roses (1866). He was president of the Horticultural
Society, and was at one time Professor of Horticulture in Harvard University.
He was afterward an Overseer and finally a Fellow of the University. No
biography of him has as yet been published except the brief sketch by the
present writer, prefixed to the revised and illustrated edition of his complete
works, in twenty volumes (Boston, 1897-1898).]

The significance of Parkman in literary history lies chiefly in
the fact that he was the first great American historian to deal on

2F 433

434 AMERICAN PROSE

a large scale with American themes. Two men of genius before
him had taken subjects from the ever- fascinating age of maritime
discovery. Seventy years ago Washington Irving published a
biography of Columbus which still remains without a worthy rival
in any language ; in his life of Washington the same writer was
less successful. Prescott*s narratives of Spanish conquest in Mex-
ico and Peru, extremely brilliant but inadequate and misleading
because of the writer's imperfect acquaintance with American
archaeology, barely approach the threshold of American history,
properly so called. Our only other historian of genius occupied
himself with the noble story of the Netherlands and their war of
independence. For American history one had to choose between
the jejune registration of Hildreth and the vapid rhetoric of Ban-
croft. Far above such writers we must rank Palfrey, in spite of
his one-sidedness ; but his work, though excellent, is without gen-
ius ; it does not clothe with warm flesh and red blood the dry
bones of the past. Before Parkman wrote it used commonly to
be said, either that our country had no history, or else that such
as it had was devoid of romantic interest. What ! Two and a
half centuries, more crowded with incident and richer in records
than any that had gone before, and yet no history I A leading
race of men thrust into a savage wilderness, to work out a new
civilization under these strange conditions, and yet no romantic
interest ! Truly the history was there, and the romance was
there, only it needed the touch of the artist to bring it out. So it
might have seemed in Dr. Johnson's day that there was but little
of interest in Britain north of the Tweed, but the enchanter, Scott,
forever dispelled such a monstrous illusion.

The first thing that strikes us in reading Parkman's books is
their picturesqueness. But they are equally remarkable for their
minute accuracy and for their wealth of knowledge. For patient
and careful research Parkman has never been excelled by any
of the Dryasdust family. He would follow up a clew with the
tenacity of a sleuth-hound. It was very rarely that anything es-
caped him, and it is but seldom that the most jealous criticism
has detected a weak spot in his statements or in his conclusions.

Parkman's accuracy, indeed, is a notable element of his pictur-
esqueness. His descriptions are vivid because in every small

FRANCIS PARK MAN 435

detail they are true to life. His preparation for his subject was
admirable. It grew naturally out of his early wanderings in the
Middlesex Fells. A passionate love of wild nature took posses-
sion of him, and in youth he conceived the plan of writing the
history of the American wilderness, and the mighty struggle be-
tween Frenchmen and Englishmen for the mastery of it. This
struggle between political despotism and political liberty for the
possession of such a vast area of virgin soil foF future growth and
expansion gives to the theme an epic grandeur. For dealing with
such a subject Parkman prepared himself by various experiences.
Though his sojourn with a wild tribe of Sioux in 1846 was not
long, yet he brought away from it knowledge of the highest value,
for his faculty of observation was as keen as that of any naturalist.
On his first journey in Europe, during his college days, he had
spent several weeks in a monastery of Passionists at Rome, and
what he saw there must have been of infinite service to him in
studying the labors of Jesuits and Franciscans in the New World.

The next thing in order was to study history at its sources, and
this involved much tedious exploration and several journeys in
Europe. A notable monument of this research exists in a cabinet
now standing in the library of the Massachusetts Historical
Society, containing nearly two hundred folio volumes of docu-
rtlents transcribed from the originals by expert copyists. Ability
to incur heavy expense is a prerequisite for such undertakings,
and herein our historian was favored by fortune. Against this
great advantage were to be offset the hardships entailed by deli-
cate health and inability to use the eyes for reading and writing.
Parkman always dictated instead of holding the pen, and his huge
mass of documents in French, Italian, Latin, and other languages,
had to be read aloud to him, while it was but seldom that he
could work for more than half an hour without stopping to take a
long rest. The heroism shown year after year in contending with
physical ailments was the index of a character fit .to be mated, for
its pertinacious courage, with the heroes that live in his shining
pages.

Parkman*s descriptions seem like the reports of an eyewitness.
The realism is so strong that the author seems to have come in
person fresh from the scenes he describes, with the smoke of the

436 AMERICAN PROSE

battle hovering about him and its fierce light glowing in his eyes.
Parkman did not feel ready to write until he had visited nearly all
the localities that form the scenery of his story, and studied them
with the patience of a surveyor and the discerning eye of a land-
scape painter. His love of nature added keen zest to this sort of
work. To sleep under the open sky was his delight, and his
books fairly reek with the fragrance of pine woods.

But except for Parkman's inborn temperament all his micro-
scopic industry would have availed him but little. To use his
own words, " Faithfulness to the truth of history involves far more
than a research, however patient and scrupulous, into special facts.
Such facts may be detailed with the most minute exactness, and
yet the narrative, taken as a whole, may be unmeaning." These
are words which the mere Dryasdust can never comprehend ; yet
they are golden words for the student of the historical art to
ponder. To make a truthful record of a vanished age, patient
scholarship is needed, and something more. Into the making of
a historian there should enter something of the naturalist, some-
thing of the poet, and something of the philosopher. Seldom has
this union of qualities been realized in such a high degree as in
Parkman.

His philosophic habit of mind is seen in all his books, but it may
best be studied in The Old Regime in Canada, The fate of
a nationalistic experiment, set on foot by one of the most abso-
lute of monarchs and fostered by one of the most devoted and
powerful of religious organizations, is traced to the operation of
causes inherent in its very nature. These pages are alive with
philosophy and teem with object-lessons of extraordinary value.

Free industrial England pitted against despotic militant France
for the possession of an ancient continent reserved from the begin-
ning of time for this decisive struggle, and dragging into the
conflict the belated barbarism of the Stone Age, — such is the
wonderful theme which Parkman has treated. Thus, while of all
our historians he is the most deeply and peculiarly American, he
is at the same time the broadest and most cosmopolitan. His
work is for all time, and the more adequately men's historic per-
spective gets adjusted, the greater will it seem.

John Fiske

FRANCIS PARKMAN 437

THE BLACK HILLS

To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell,
To slowly trace the forest's shady scene.
Where things that own not man's dominion dwell,
And mortal foot hath ne'er or rarely been ;
To climb the trackless mountain all unseen,
With the wild flock that never needs a fold ;
Alone o'er steeps and foamy falls to lean ;
This is not solitude ; 'tis but to hold

Converse with Nature's charms, and view her stores unrolled.

Childe Harold

We travelled eastward for two days, and then the gloomy ridges
of the Black Hills rose up before us. The village passed along
for some miles beneath their declivities, trailing out to a great
length over the arid prairie, or winding at times among small
detached hills of distorted shapes. Turning sharply to the left,
we entered a wide defile of the mountains, down the bottom of
which a brook came winding, lined with tall grass and dense
copses, amid which were hidden many beaver-dams and lodges.
We passed along between two lines of high precipices and rocks,
piled in disorder one upon another, with scarcely a tree, a bush,
or a clump of grass to veil their nakedness. The restless Indian
boys were wandering along their edges and clambering up and
down their rugged sides, and sometimes a group of them would
stand on the verge of a cliff and look down on the array as it
passed in review beneath them. As we advanced, the passage
grew more narrow; then it suddenly expanded into a round
grassy meadow, completely encompassed by mountains; and here
the families stopped as they came up in turn, and the camp rose
like magic.

The lodges were hardly erected when, with their usual precipi-
tation, the Indians set about accomplishing the object that had
brought them there; that is, the obtaining poles for their new
lodges. Half the population, men, women, and boys, mounted
their horses and set out for the interior of the mountains. As
they rode at full gallop over the shingly rocks and into the dark

438 AMERICAN PROSE

opening of the defile beyond, I thought I had never read oi
dreamed of a more strange or picturesque cavalcade. We passed
between precipices, sharp and splintering at the tops, their sides
beetling over the defile or descending in abrupt declivities,
bristling with black fir-trees. On our left they rose close to us
like a wall, but on the right a winding brook with a narrow strip
of marshy soil intervened. The stream was clogged with old
beaver-dams, and spread frequently into wide pools. There were
thick bushes and many dead and blasted trees along its course,
though frequently nothing remained but stumps cut close to the
ground by the beaver, and marked with the sharp chisel-like
teeth of those indefatigable laborers. Sometimes we were diving
among trees, and then emerging upon open spots, over which,
Indian-like, all galloped at full speed. As Pauline bounded over
the rocks I felt her saddle-girth slipping, and alighted to draw it
tighter; when the whole array swept past me in a moment, the
women with their gaudy ornaments tinkling as they rode, the
men whooping, and laughing, and lashing forward their horses.
Two black- tailed deer bounded away among the rocks; Raymond
shot at them from horseback ; the sharp report of his rifle was
answered by another equally sharp from the opposing cliffs, and
then the echoes, leaping in rapid succession from side to side,
died away rattling, far amid the mountains.

After having ridden in this manner for six or eight miles, the
appearance of the scene began to change, and all the declivities
around us were covered with forests of tall, slender pine trees.
The Indians began to fall off to the right and left, and dispersed
with their hatchets and knives among these woods, to cut the
poles which they had come to seek. Soon I was left almost
alone ; but in the deep stillness of those lonely mountains, the
stroke of hatchets and the sound of voices might be heard from
far and near.

Reynal, who imitated the Indians in their habits as well as the
worst features of their character, had killed buffalo enough to
make a lodge for himself and his squaw, and now he was eager
to get the poles necessary to complete it. He asked me to let
Raymond go with him, and assist in the work. I assented, and
the two men immediately entered the thickest part of the wood.

FRANCIS PARKMAN 439

Having left my horse in Raymond's keeping, I began to climb
the mountain. I was weak and weary, and made slow progress,
often pausing to rest, but after an hour I gained a height, whence
the little valley out of which I had climbed seemed like a deep,
dark gulf, though the inaccessible peak of the mountain was still
towering to a much greater distance above. Objects familiar
from childhood surrounded me; crags and rocks, a black and
sullen brook that gurgled with a hollow voice deep among the
crevices, a wood of mossy distorted trees and prostrate trunks
flung down by age and storms, scattered among the rocks, or
damming the foaming waters of the little brook. The objects
were the same, yet they were thrown into a wilder and more
startling scene, for the black crags and the savage trees assumed
a grim and threatening aspect, and close across the valley the
opposing mountain confronted me, rising from the gulf for thou-
sands of feet with its bare pinnacles and its ragged covering of
pines. Yet the scene was not without its milder features. As I
ascended, I found frequent little grassy terraces, and there was
one of these close at hand, across which the brook was stealing,
beneath the shade of scattered trees that seemed artificially
planted. Here I made a welcome discovery, no other than a
bed of strawberries, with their white flowers and their red fruit,
close nestled among the grass by the side of the brook, and I sat
down by them, hailing them as old acquaintances; for among
those lonely and perilous mountains, they awakened delicious
associations of the gardens and peaceful homes of far-distant
New-England.

Yet wild as they were, these mountains were thickly peopled.
As I climbed further, I found the broad, dusty paths made by the
elk, as they filed across the mountain side. The grass on all the
terraces was trampled down by deer; there were numerous tracks
of wolves, and in some of the rougher and more precipitous
parts of the ascent, I found foot-prints different from any that I
had ever seen, and which I took to be those of the Rocky Moun-
tain sheep. I sat down upon a rock; there was a perfect still-
ness. No wind was stirring, and not even an insect could be
heard. I recollected the danger of becoming lost in such a
place, and therefore I fixed my eye upon one of the tallest pin-

440 AMERICAN PROSE

nacles of the opposite mountain. It rose sheer upright from
the woods below, and by an extraordinary freak of nature, sus-
tained aloft on its very summit a large loose rock. Such a land-
mark could never be mistaken, and feeling once more secure, I
began again to move forward. A white wolf jumped up from
among some bushes, and leaped clumsily away; but he stopped
for a moment, and turned back his keen eye and his bristling
muzzle. I longed to take his scalp and carry it back with me,
as an appropriate trophy of the Black Hills, but before I could
fire, he was gone among the rocks. Soon after I heard a rustling
sound, with a cracking of twigs at a little distance, and saw
moving above the tall bushes the branching antlers of an elk. I
was in the midst of a hunter's paradise.

Such are the Black Hills, as I found them in July; but they
wear a different garb when winter sets in, when the broad boughs
of the fir tree are bent to the ground by the load of snow, and
the dark mountains are whitened with it. At that season the
mountain-trappers, returned from their autumn expeditions,
often build their rude cabins in the midst of these solitudes, and
live in abundance and luxury on the game that harbors there. I
have heard them relate, how with their tawny mistresses, and
perhaps a few young Indian companions, they have spent months
in total seclusion. They would dig pitfalls, and set traps for the
white wolves, the sables, and the martens, and though through
the whole night the awful chorus of the wolves would resound
from the frozen mountains around them, yet within their massive
walls of logs they would lie in careless ease and comfort before
the blazing fire, and in the morning shoot the elk and deer from
their very door.

[From Thf California and Oregon Trail: being Sketches of Prairie and
Rocky Mountain Life, 1849, chapter 17, ''The Black Hills." The text is that
of the hrst edition, which is in certain respects preferable to that of the author's

revised edition.]

THE AMERICAN INDIAN

Of the Indian character, much has been written foolishly, and
credulously believed. By the rhapsodies of poets, the cant of
sentimentalists, and the extravagance of some who should have

FRANCIS PAR KM AN 44 1

known better, a counterfeit image has been tricked out, which
might seek in vain for its likeness through every corner of the
habitable earth; an image bearing no more resemblance to its
original, than the monarch of the tragedy and the hero of the
epic poem bear to their living prototypes in the palace and the
camp. The shadows of his wilderness home, and the darker
mantle of his own inscrutable reserve, have made the Indian
warrior a wonder and a mystery. Yet to the eye of rational ob-
servation there is nothing unintelligible in him. He is full, it is
true, of contradiction. He deems himself the centre of greatness
and renown; his pride is proof against the fiercest torments of
fire and steel; and yet the same man would beg for a dram of
whiskey, or pick up a crust of bread thrown to him like a dog,
from the tent door of the traveller. At one moment, he is wary
and cautious to the verge of cowardice; at the next, he abandons
himself to a very insanity of recklessness; and the habitual self-
restraint which throws an impenetrable veil over emotion is
joined to the unbridled passions of a madman or a beast.

Such inconsistencies, strange as they seem in our eyes, when
viewed under a novel aspect, are but the ordinary incidents of
humanity. The qualities of the mind are not uniform in their
action through all the relations of life. With different men, and
different races of men, pride, valor, prudence, have different
forms of manifestation, and where in one instance they lie dor-
mant, in another they are keenly awake. The conjunction of
greatness and littleness, meanness and pride, is older than the
days of the patriarchs; and such antiquated phenomena, dis-
played under a new form in the unreflecting, undisciplined mind
of a savage, call for no special wonder, but should rather be
classed with the other enigmas of the fathomless human heart.
The dissecting knife of Rochefoucault might lay bare ma,tters of
no less curious observation in the breast of every man.

Nature has stamped the Indian with a hard and stern physiog-
nomy. Ambition, revenge, envy, jealousy, are his ruling pas-
sions; and his cold temperament is little exposed to those
effeminate vices which are the bane of milder races. With him
revenge is an overpowering instinct; nay, more, it is a point of
honor and a duty. His pride sets all language at defiance. He

442 AMERICAN PROSE

loathes the thought of coercion; and few of his race have evei
stooped to discharge a menial office. A wild love of liberty,
an utter intolerance of control, lie at the basis of his character,
and fire his whole existence. Yet, in spite of his haughty inde-
pendence, he is a devout hero-worshipper; and high achievement
in war or policy touches a chord to which his nature never fails
to respond. He looks up with admiring reverence to the sages
and heroes of his tribe; and it is this principle, joined to the
respect for age springing from the patriarchal element in his
social system, which, beyond all others, contributes union and
harmony to the erratic members of an Indian community. With
him the love of glory kindles into a burning passion; and to
allay its cravings, he will dare cold and famine, fire, tempest,
torture, and death itself.

These generous traits are overdast by much that is dark, cold
and sinister, by sleepless distrust, and rankling jealousy.
Treacherous himself, he is always suspicious of treachery in
others. Brave as he is, — and few of mankind are braver, — he
will vent his passion by a secret stab rather than an open blow.
His warfare is full of ambuscade and stratagem; and he never
rushes into battle with that joyous self-abandonment, with which
the warriors of the Gothic races flung themselves into the ranks
of their enemies. In his feasts and his drinking bouts we find
none of that robust and full-toned mirth, which reigned at the
rude carousals of our barbaric ancestry. He is never jovial in
his cups, and maudlin sorrow or maniacal rage is the sole result
of his potations.

Over all emotion he throws the veil of an iron self-control,
originating in a peculiar form of pride, and fostered by rigorous
discipline from childhood upward. He is trained to conceal pas-
sion, and not to subdue it. The inscrutable warrior is aptly
imaged by the hackneyed figure of a volcano covered with snow;
and no man can say when or where the wild-fire will burst forth.
This shallow self-mastery serves to give dignity to public delib-
eration, and harmony to social life. Wrangling and quarrel are
strangers to an Indian dwelling; and while an assembly of the
ancient Gauls was garrulous as a convocation of magpies, a Roman
senate might have taken a lesson from the grave solemnity of an

FRANCIS PARKMAN 443

Indian council. In the midst of his family and friends, he hides
affections, by nature none of the most tender, under a mask of
icy coldness; and in the torturing fires of his enemy, the haughty
sufferer maintains to the last his look of grim defiance.

His intellect is as peculiar as his moral organization. Among
all savages, the powers of perception preponderate over those of
reason and analysis; but this is more especially the case with
the Indian. An acute judge of character, at least of such parts
of it as his experience enables him to comprehend; keen to a
proverb in all exercises of war and the chase, he seldom traces
effects to their causes, or follows out actions to their remote
results. Though a close observer of external nature, he no sooner
attempts to account for her phenomena than he involves himself
in the most ridiculous absurdities; and quite content with these
puerilities, he has not the least desire to push his inquiries
further. His curiosity, abundantly active within its own narrow
circle, is dead to all things else; and to attempt rousing it from
its torpor is but a bootless task. He seldom takes cognizance
of general or abstract ideas; and his language has scarcely the
power to express them, except through the medium of figures
drawn from the external world, and often highly picturesque and
forcible. The absence of reflection makes him grossly improvi-
dent, and unfits him for pursuing any complicated scheme of war
or policy.

Some races of men seem moulded in wax, soft and melting, at
once plastic and feeble. Some races, like some metals, combine
the greatest flexibility with the greatest strength. But the Indian
is hewn out of a rock. You can rarely change the form without
destruction of the substance. Races of inferior energy have pos-
sessed a power of expansion and assimilation to which he is a
stranger; and it is this fixed and rigid quality which has proved
his ruin. He will not learn the arts of civilization, and he and
his forest must perish together. The stern, unchanging features
of his mind excite our admiration from their very immutability;
and we look with deep interest on the fate of this irreclaimable
son of the wilderness, the child who will not be weaned from the
breast of his rugged mother. And our interest increases when
we discern in the unhappy wanderer the germs of heroic virtues

444 AMERICAN PROSE

mingled among his vices, — a hand bountiful to bestow as it is
rapacious to seize, and even in extremest famine, imparting its
last morsel to a fellow-sufferer; a heart which, strong in friend-
ship as in hate, thinks it not too much to lay down life for its
chosen comrade; a soul true to its own idea of honor, and burn-
ing with an unquenchable thirst for greatness and renown.

The imprisoned lion in the showman's cage differs not more
widely from the lord of the desert, than the beggarly frequenter
of frontier garrisons and dramshops differs from the proud deni-
zen of the woods. It is in his native wilds alone that the Indian
must be seen and studied. Thus to depict him is the aim of the
ensuing History; and if, from the shades of rock and forest,
the savage features should look too grimly forth, it is because
the clouds of a tempestuous war have cast upon the picture their
murky shadows and lurid fires.

[From The Conspiracy of Pontiac and the Indian War after ike Conquest
of Canada^ 1851, chapter i, "The Indian Character." The text employed, by
permission of the publishers, Little, Brown, and Co., is that of the author's
revised edition of 1870.]

THE CAPTURE OF QUEBEC

The eventful night of the twelfth was clear and calm, with no
light but that of the stars. Within two hours before daybreak,
thirty boats, crowded with sixteen hundred soldiers, cast off from
the vessels, and floated downward, in perfect order, with the
current of the ebb tide. To the boundless joy of the army,
Wolfe's malady had abated, and he was able to command in per-
son. His ruined health, the gloomy prospects of the 'siege, and
the disaster at Montmorenci, had oppressed him with the deepest
melancholy, but never impaired for a moment the promptness of
his decisions, or the impetuous energy of his action. He sat in
the stern of one of the boats, pale and weak, but borne up to a
calm height of resolution. Every order had been given, every
arrangement made, and it only remained to face the issue. The
ebbing tide sufficed to bear the boats along, and nothing broke
the silence of the night but the gurgling of the river, and the low

FRANCIS PARKMAN 445

voice of Wolfe, as he repeated to the officers about him the
stanzas of Gray's Elegy in a Country Churchyard^ which had re-
cently appeared and which he had just received from England.
Perhaps, as he uttered those strangely appropriate words^ —

"The paths of glory lead but to the grave,"

the shadows of his own approaching fate stole with mournful
prophecy across his mind. "Gentlemen," he said, as he closed
his recital, " I would rather have written those lines than take
Quebec to-morrow."

As they approached the landing-place the boats edged closer
in towards the northern shore, and the woody precipices rose
high on their left, like a wall of undistinguished blackness.

" Qui vive ? " shouted a French sentinel, from out the imper-
vious gloom.

" La France / " answered a captain of Eraser's Highlanders,
from the foremost boat.

"^ quel regiment ? ^^ demanded the soldier.

"Z><f la ReineV promptly replied the Highland captain, who
chanced to know that the regiment so designated formed part of
Bougainville's command. As boats were frequently passing down
the river with supplies for the garrison, and as a convoy from
Bougainville was expected that very night, the sentinel was de-
ceived, and allowed the English to proceed.

A few moments after, they were challenged again, and this time
they could discern the soldier running close down to the water's
edge, as if all his suspicions were aroused; but the skilful replies
of the Highlander once more saved the party from discovery.

They reached the landing-place in safety, — an indentation in
the shore, about a league above the city, and now bearing the
name of Wolfe's Cove. Here a narrow path led up the face of
the heights, and a French guard was posted at the top to defend
the pass. By the force of the current, the foremost boats, in-
cluding that which carried Wolfe himself, were borne a little
below the spot. The general was one of the first on shore. He
looked upward at the rugged heights which towered above him
in the gloom. " You can try it," he coolly observed to an officer
near him; "but I don't think you'll get up."

446 AMERICAN PROSE

At the point where the Highlanders landed, one of their cap.
tains, Donald Macdonald, apparently the same whose presence oi
mind had just saved the enterprise from ruin, was climbing in
advance of his men, when he was challenged by a sentinel. He
replied in French, by declaring that he had been sent to relieve
the guard, and ordering the soldier to withdraw. Before the
latter was undeceived, a crowd of Highlanders were close at
hand, while the steeps below were thronged with eager climbers,
dragging themselves up by trees, roots, and bushes. The guard
turned out, and made a brief though brave resistance. In a
moment, they were cut to pieces, dispersed, or made prisoners;
while men after men came swarming up the height, and quickly
formed upon the plains above. Meanwhile, the vessels had
dropped downward with the current, and anchored opposite the
landing-place. The remaining troops were disembarked, and,
with the dawn of day, the whole were brought in safety to the
shore.

The sun rose, and, from the ramparts of Quebec, the astonished
people saw the Plains of Abraham glittering with arms, and the
dark-red lines of the English forming in array of battle. Breath-
less messengers had borne the evil tidings to Montcalm, and far
and near his wide-extended camp resounded with the rolling of
alarm drums and the din of startled preparation. He, too, had
had his struggles and his sorrows. The civil power had thwarted
him; famine, discontent, and disaffection were rife among his
soldiers; and no small portion of the Canadian militia had dis-
persed from sheer starvation. In spite of all, he had trusted to
hold out till the winter frosts should drive the invaders from
before the town; when, on, that disastrous morning, the news of
their successful temerity fell like a cannon shot upon his ear.
Still he assumed a tone of confidence. "They have got to the
weak side of us at last," he is reported to have said, "and we
must crush them with our numbers." With headlong haste, his
troops were pouring over the bridge of the St. Charles, and gath-
ering in heavy masses under the western ramparts of the town.
Could numbers give assurance of success, their triumph would
have been secure ; for five French battalions and the armed colo-
nial peasantry amounted in all to more than seven thousand five

FRANCIS PARKMAN 447

hundred men. Full in sight before them stretched the long, thin
lines of the British forces, — the half-wild Highlanders, the steady
soldiery of England, and the hardy levies of the provinces, —
less than five thousand in number, but all inured to battle, and
strong in the full assurance of success. Yet, could the chiefs of
that gallant army have pierced the secrets of the future, could
they have foreseen that the victory which they burned to achieve
would have robbed England of her proudest boast, that the con-
quest of Canada would pave the way for the independence of
America, their swords would have dropped from their hands, and
the heroic fire have gone out within their hearts.

It was nine o'clock, and the adverse armies stood motionless,
each gazing on the other. The clouds hung low, and, at inter-
vals, warm light showers descended, besprinkling both alike.
The coppice and cornfields in front of the British troops were
filled with French sharpshooters, who kept up a distant, spatter-
ing fire. Here and there a soldier fell in the ranks, and the gap
was filled in silence.

At a little before ten, the British could see that Montcalm
was preparing to advance, and, in a few moments, all his troops
appeared in rapid motion. They came on in three divisions,
shouting after the manner of their nation, and firing heavily as
soon as they came within range. In the British ranks, not a
trigger was pulled, not a soldier stirred ; and their ominous com-
posure seemed to damp the spirits of tlie assailants. It was not
till the French were within forty yards that the fatal word was
given, and the British muskets blazed forth at once in one crash-
ing explosion. Like a ship at full career, arrested with sudden
ruin on a sunken rock, the ranks of Montcalm staggered, shivered,
and broke before that wasting storm of lead. The smoke, rolling
along the field, for a moment shut out the view; but when the
white wreaths were scattered on the wind, a wretched spectacle
was disclosed; men and officers tumbled in heaps, battalions re-
solved into a mob, order and obedience gone; and when the
British muskets were levelled for a second volley, the masses of
the militia were seen to cower and shrink with uncontrollable
panic. For a few minutes, the French regulars stood their
ground, returning a sharp and not ineffectual fire. But now,

448 AMERICAN PROSE

echoing cheer on cheer, redoubling volley on volley, trampling
the dying and the dead and driving the fugitives in crowds, the
British troops advanced and swept the field before them. The
ardor of the men burst all restraint. They broke into a run, and
with unsparing slaughter chased the flying multitudes to the gates
of Quebec. Foremost of all, the light-footed Highlanders dashed
along in furious pursuit, hewing down the Frenchmen with their
broadswords, and slaying many in the very ditch of the fortifica-
tions. Never was victory more quick or more decisive.

In the short action and pursuit, the French lost fifteen hundred
men, killed, wounded, and taken. Of the remainder, some
escaped within the city, and others fled across the St. Charles to
rejoin their comrades who had been left to guard the camp. The
pursuers were recalled by sound of trumpet; the broken ranks
were formed afresh, and the English troops withdrawn beyond
reach of the cannon of Quebec. Bougainville, with his corps,
arrived from the upper country, and, hovering about their rear,
threatened an attack ; but when he saw what greeting was pre-
pared for him, he abandoned his purpose and withdrew. Towns-
hend and Murray, the only general officers who remained unhurt,
passed to the head of every regiment in turn, and thanked the
soldiers for the bravery they had shown; yet the triumph of the
victors was mingled with sadness, as the tidings went from rank
to rank that Wolfe had fallen.

In the heat of the action, as he advanced at the head of the
grenadiers of Louisburg, a bullet shattered his wrist; but he
wrapped his handkerchief about the wound, and showed no sign
of pain. A moment more, and a ball pierced his side. Still he
pressed forward, waving his sword and cheering his soldiers to
the attack, when a third shot lodged deep within his breast. He
paused, reeled, and, staggering to one side, fell to the earth.
Brown, a lieutenant of the grenadiers, Henderson, a volunteer,
an officer of artillery, and a private soldier, raised him together
in their arms, and, bearing him to the rear, laid him softly on
the grass. They asked if he would have a surgeon; but he shook
his head, and answered that all was over with him. His eyes
closed with the torpor of approaching death, and those around
sustained his fainting form. Yet they could not withhold their

FRANCIS PARKMAN 449

gaze from the wild turmoil before them, and the charging ranks
of their companions rushing through fire and smoke. "See how
they run," one of the officers exclaimed, as the French fled in
confusion before the levelled bayonets. " Who run? " demanded
Wolfe, opening his eyes like a man aroused from sleep. "The
enemy, sir," was the reply; "they give way everywhere."
"Then," said the dying general, "tell Colonel Burton to march
Webb's regiment down to Charles River, to cut off their retreat
from the bridge. Now, God be praised, I will die in peace,"
he muttered; and, turning on his side, he calmly breathed his
last.

Almost at the same moment fell his great adversary, Mont-
calm, as he strove, with vain bravery, to rally his shattered ranks.
Struck down with a mortal wound, he was placed upon a litter
and borne to the General Hospital on the banks of the St.
Charles. The surgeons told him that he could not recover. " I
am glad of it," was his calm reply. He then asked how long he
might survive, and was told that he had not many hours remain-
ing. "So much the better," he said; "I am happy that I shall
not live to see the surrender of Quebec." Officers from the gar-
rison came to his bedside to ask his orders and instructions. " I
will give no more orders," replied the defeated soldier; "I have
much business that must be attended to, of greater moment than
your ruined garrison and this wretched country. My time is
very short; therefore, pray leave me." The officers withdrew,
and none remained in the chamber but his confessor and the
Bishop of Quebec. To the last, he expressed his contempt for
his own mutinous and half-famished troops, and his admiration
for the disciplined valor of his opponents. He died before mid-
night, and was buried at his own desire in a cavity of the earth
formed by the bursting of a bombshell.

The victorious army encamped before Quebec, and pushed
their preparations for the siege with zealous energy; but before
a single gun was brought to bear, the white flag was hung out,
and the garrison surrendered. On the eighteenth of September,
1759, ^^ rock-built citadel of Canada passed forever from the
hands of its ancient masters.

The victory on the Plains of Abraham and the downfall of Que-

450 AMERICAN PROSE

bee filled all England with pride and exultation. From north to
south, the land blazed with illuminations, and resounded with
the ringing of bells, the firing of guns, and the shouts of the
multitude. In one village alone all was dark and silent amid the
general joy; for here dwelt the widowed mother of Wolfe. The
populace, with unwonted delicacy, respected her lonely sorrow,
and forbore to obtrude the sound of their rejoicings upon her
grief for one who had been through life her pride and solace,
and repaid her love with a tender and constant devotion.

[From The Conspiracy of Pontiac and the Indian War after the Conquest
of Canada^ 1851, chapter 4, " Collision of the Rival Colonies." By permission
of the publishers, Little, Brown, and Co., the text employed is that of the
author's revised edition of 1870.]

APPENDIX

[Several remarkable passages from the older literature are here inclttded,
to indicate the temper and attitude of mind of the colonists.]

THE PILGRIMS

Being thus ariued in a good harbor, and brought safe to land,
they fell vpon their knees & blessed y* God of heauen, who had
brought them ouer y® vast, & furious Ocean, and deliuered them
from all y® periles, & miseries thereof againe to set their feete
on y® firme and stable earth, their proper elemente. And no
maruell if they were thus loyefull, seeing wise Seneca was so
affected with sailing a few miles on y® coast of his owne Italy; as
he affirmed, that he had rather remaine twentie years on his way
by land, then pass by sea to any place in a short time; so tedious,
& dreadfull was y® same vnto him.

But hear I cannot but stay, and make a pause, and stand half
amazed at this poore peoples presente condition; and so I thinke
will the reader too, when he well considers y* same. Being thus
passed y*" vast Ocean, and a sea of troubles before in their prep-
aration (as may be remembered by y* which wente before) they
had now no freinds to wellcome them, nor Inns to entertaine, or
refresh their weatherbeaten bodys, no houses, or much less townes
to repaire too, to seeke for succoure; It is recorded in scripture
as a mercie to y® apostle & his shipwraked company, y* the sau-
age barbarians shewed them no smale kindnes in refreshing them,
but these sauage barbarians, when they mette with them (as after
will appeare) were readier to fill their sids full of arrows then
otherwise. And for y® season it was winter, and they that know
y* winters of y* cuntrie, know them to be sharp & violent, & sub-
jecte to cruell & feirce stormes, deangerous trauill to known
places, much more to serch an vnknown coast. Besids what

451

452 AMERICAN PROSE

could they see, but a hidious & desolate willdernes, full of wild
beasts, & willd men, and what multituds ther might be of them
they knew not; nether could they (as it were) goe vp to y* tope
of pisgah, to vew from this willdernes, a more goodly cuntrie to
feed their hops; for which way so euer they tumd their eys (saue
vpward to y* heavens) they could haue little solace or content, in
respecte of any outward objects, for sumer being done, all things
stand vpon them with a wetherbeaten face; an y* whole countrie
(full of woods & thickets) represented a wild & sauage heiw; If
they looked behind them, ther was y* mighty Ocean which they
had passed, and was now a maine barr, & goulfe, to seperate them
from all y* ciuill parts of y* world. If it be said they had a ship
to sucour them, it is trew; but what heard they daly from y* m'
& company ? but y* with speede they should looke out a place
(with their shallop) wher they would be, at some near distance;
for y* season was shuch, as he would not stirr from thence, till a
safe harbor was discouered by them, wher they would be, and
he might goe without danger; and that victells consumed apace,
but he must & would keepe sufficient for them selues, & their
returne; yea it was muttered by some, that if they gott not a
place in time, they would turne them, & their goods a shore, &
leaue them. Let it be also considered what weake hopes of
supply, & succoure, they left behinde them; y* might bear vp
their minds in this sade condition, and trialls they were vnder;
and they could not but be uery smale; It is true indeed, y* affec-
tions & loue of their brethren at Leyden was cordiall & entire
towards them, but they had litle power to help them, or them
selues ; and how y^ case stoode betwene them, & y^ marchants, at
their coming away hath alheady been declared. What could
now sustaine them, but y^ Spirite of God & his grace? May not,
& ought not the children of these fathers rightly say, our faithers
were English men which came otter this great Ocean, and were
ready to perish in this willdernes ^ but they cried vnto y Lord, and
he heard their voyce^ and looked on their aduersiiie, 6r*^.

[From History of the Plimoth Plantation. By William Bradford. Written
from about 1630 onward. The text is that of the original manuscript, as
printed in Doyle's facsimile.]

APPENDIX 453

WAR

If you should but see Wane described to you in a Map, es-
pecially in a Countrey, well knowne to you, nay dearely beloved
of you, where you drew your first breath, where once, yea where
lately you dwelt, where you have received ten thousand mercies,
and have many a deare friend and Countrey-man and kinsman
abiding, how could you but lament and mourne?

Warre is the conflict of enemies enraged with bloody revenge,
wherein the parties opposite carry their lives in their hands,
every man turning prodigall of his very heart blood, and willing
to be killed to kill. The instruments are clashing swords, rat-
ling speares, skul-dividing Holberds, murthering pieces, and
thundering Cannons, from whose mouthes proceed the fire, and
smell, and smoake, and terrour, death, as it were, of the very
bottomlesse pit. Wee wonder now and then at the sudden death
of a man : alas, you might there see a thousand men not onely
healthy, but stout and strong, struck dead in the twinckling of an
eye, their breath exhales without so much as. Lord have mercy up-
on us. Death heweth its way thorow a wood of men in a minute
of time from the mouth of a murderer, turning a forrest into a
Champion suddenly; and when it hath used these to slay their
opposites, they are recompenced with the like death themselves.
O the shrill eare-piercing clangs of the Trumpets^ noise of Drums ^
the animating voyces of Horse Captaines, and Commanders^
learned and learning to destroy ! There is the undaunted Horse
whose neck is clothed with thunder, and the glory of whose nos trills
is terrible ; hoiu doth hee lye pawing and prauncing in the valley,
going forth to meete the armed men ? he mocks atfeare, swallowing
the groiuid with fiercenesse and rage, and saying among the trum-
pets, Ha, Ha, hee smels the battell a far off, the thunder of the
Captaines and the shouting. Here ride some dead men swagg-
ing in their deepe saddles; there fall others alive upon their
dead Horses; death sends a message to those from the mouth of
the Muskets, these it talkes with face to face, and stabs them in
the fift rib : In yonder file there is a man hath his arme struck
off from his shoulder, another by him hath lost his leg, here

454 AMERICAN PROSE

Stands a Soldier with halfe a face, there fights another upon his
stumps, and at once both kils and is killed; not far off lies a
company wallowing in their sweat and goare; such a man whilst
he chargeth his Musket is discharged of his life, and falls upon
his dead fellow. Every battell of the warriour is with confused
noise and garments rouled in blood. Death reignes in the field,
and is sure to have the day which side soever falls. In the
meanewhile (O formidable !) the infernall fiends follow the Campe
to catch after the soules of rude nefarous souldiers (such as are
commonly men of that calling) who fight themselves fearlesly
into the mouth of hell for revenge, a booty or a little revenue.
How thicke and three-fold doe they speed one another to destruc-
tion? A day of battell is a day of harvest for the devill.

[From New Englands Teares^ for Old Englands Feares, Preached in a
Sermon on July ^j, 1640^ being a day of Publike Humiliation^ appointed by
the Churches in behalf e of our native Countrey in time of feared dangers. 'Sj
William Hooke, 1641.]

ENGLAND AND AMERICA

And therefore I cannot but admire, and indeed much pitty the
dull stupidity of people necessitated in England, who rather then
they will remove themselves, live here a base, slavish, penurious
life; as if there were a necessity to live and to live so, choosing
rather then they will forsake England to stuff New-gate^ Bride-
wellj and other Jayles with their carkessies, nay cleave to tybume
it selfe; and so bring confusion to their souls horror and infamine
to their kindred or posteritie, others itch out their wearisome
lives in reliance of other mens charities, an uncertaine and un-
manly expectation; some more abhorring such courses betake
them selves to almost perpetuall and restlesse toyle and drug-
geries out of which (whilst their strength lasteth) they (observing
hard diets, earlie and late houres) make hard shift to subsist from
hand to mouth, untill age or sicknesse takes them off from labour
and directs them the way to beggerie, and such indeed arc to be
pittied, relieved and provided for.

I have seriously considered when I have (passing the streets)

APPENDIX 45 5

heard the several Cryes, and noting the commodities, and the
worth of them they have carried and cryed up and down; how
possibly a livelihood could be exacted out of them, as to cry
Matches, Smal-Coal, Blacking, Pen and Ink, Thred-laces, and a
hundred more such kinde of trifling merchandizes; then looking
on the nastinesse of their linnen habits and bodies: I conclude
if gain sufficient could be raised out of them for subsistance; yet
their manner of living was degenerate and base; and their con-
dition to be far below the meanest servant in Virginia,

[From Leah and Rachel^ or, the Two FruitfuU Sisters Virginia and
Maryland, By John Hammond, 1656.]

NEW ENGLAND

Ntw England is said to begin at 40 and to end at 46 of
Northerly Latitude, that is from de la Ware Bay to New-found-
Land,

The Sea Coasts are accounted wholsomest, the East and South
Winds coming from Sea produceth warm weather, the Northwest
coming over land causeth extremity of Cold, and many times
strikes the Inhabitants both English and Indian with that sad
Disease called there the Plague of the back, but with us ^/«//>/«a.

The Country generally is Rocky and Mountanous, and ex-
tremely overgrown with wood, yet here and there beautified with
large rich Valleys, wherein are Lakes ten, twenty, yea sixty miles
in compass, out of which our great Rivers have their Begin-
nings.

Fourscore miles (upon a direct line) to the Northwest of Scar-
boroWy a Ridge of Mountains run Northwest and Northeast an
hundred Leagues, known by the name of the White Mountains^
upon which lieth Snow all the year, and is a Land-mark twenty
miles off at Sea. It is rising ground from the Sea shore to these
Hills, and they are inaccessible but by the Gullies which the dis-
solved Snow hath made; in these Gullies grow Saven Bushes,
which being taken hold of are a good help to the climbing Dis-
coverer; upon the top of the highest of these Mountains is a large

456 AMERICAN PROSE

Level or Plain of a days journey over, whereon nothing grows but
Moss; at the farther end of this Plain is another Hill called the
Sugar-Loaf y to outward appearance a rude heap of massie stones
piled one upon another, and you may as you ascend step from
one stone to another, as if you were going up a pair of stairs, but
winding still about the Hill till you come to the top, which will
require half a days time, and yet it is not above a Mile, where
there is also a Level of about an Acre of ground, with a pond of
clear water in the midst of it; which you may hear run down, but
how it ascends is a mystery. From this rocky Hill you may see
the whole Country round about; it is far above the lower Clouds,
and from hence we beheld a Vapour (like a great Pillar) drawn
up by the Sun Beams out of a great Lake or Pond into the Air,
where it was formed into a Cloud. The Country beyond these
Hills Northward is daunting terrible, being full of rocky Hills,
as thick as Mole-Hills in a meadow, and clothed with infinite
thick Woods.

[From New England'* s Rarities discovered in Birds^ Beasis^ Fishes^ Sir*
pents, and Plants of that Country, John Josselyn, Gent,^ 1672.3

THE PILHANNAW

The Pilhannaw or Mechquan^ much like the description of
the Indian Ruck^ a monstrous great Bird, a kind of Hawk, some
say an Eagle, four times as big as a Goshawk, white MaiPd,
having two or three purple Feathers in her head as long as Geeses
Feathers they make Pens of, the Quills of these Feathers are
purple, as b^g as Swans Quills and transparent; her Head is as
big as a Childs of a year old, a very Princely Bird; when she
soars abroad, all sort of feathered Creatures hide themselves, yet
she never preys upon any of them, but upon Fawns 2xAJaccals:
She Ayries in the Woods upon the High Hills of Ossapy^zsA is
very rarely or seldom seen.

[From the same.]

APPENDIX 457

NATURE AND CHRISTIANITY

As long as Plum Island shall faithfully keep the commanded
Post; Notwithstanding all the hectoring Words, and hard Blows
of the proud and boisterous Ocean; As long as any Salmon, or
Sturgeon shall swim in the streams of Merrimack ; or any Perch,
or Pickeril, in Crane Pond ; As long as the Sea-Fowl shall know
the Time of their coming, and not neglect seasonably to visit the
Places of their Acquaintance ; As long as any Cattel shall be fed
with the Grass growing in the Medows, which do humbly bow
down themselves before Turkie-Hill ; As long as any Sheep shall
walk upon Old- Town Hills, and shall from thence pleasantly look
down upon the River Parker, the fruitful Maris hes lying beneath ;
As long as any free & harmless Doves shall find a White Oak,
or other Tree within the Township, to perch, or feed, or build a
careless Nest upon; and shall voluntarily present themselves to
perform the office of Gleaners after Barley-Harvest; As long as
Nature shall not grow Old and dote; but shall constantly re-
member to give the rows of Indian Corn their education by Pairs:
So long shall Christians be born there ; and being first made meet
shall from thence be translated, to be made partakers of the In-
heritance of the Saints in Light.

[From Phanomena quadam apocalypHca ad aspectum novi orHs configU'
rata. Or^ some fe^v Lines toivard a description of New Heaven As It makes
to those who stand upon the New Earth, By Samuel Sewall, 1 697. The
text is that of the second edition, 1727.]

CAPTIVITY

After this, we went up the mountain, and saw the smoke of
the fires in the town, and beheld the awful desolations of Deer-
field : And before we marched any farther, they killed a sucking
child of the English. There were slain by the enemy of the
inhabitants of Deerfield, to the number of thirty-eight, besides
jiine of ihe neighboring towns. We travelled not far the first
day; God made the heathen so to pity our children, that though

45 8 AMERICAN PROSE

they had several wounded persons of their own to carry upon
their shoulders, for thirty miles ^ before they came to the river, yet
they carried our children, incapable of travelling, in their arms,
and upon their shoulders. When we came to our lodging place,
xh^ first night, they dug away the snow, and made some wigwams,
cut down some small branches of the spruce tree to lie down on,
and gave the prisoners somewhat to eat; but we had but little
appetite. I was pinioned, and bound down that night, and so I
was every night whilst I was with the army. Some of the enemy
who brought drink with them from the town, fell to drinking,
and in their drunken fit, they killed my negro man, the only dead
person I either saw at the town, or in the way.

In the night an Englishman made his escape; in the morning
\_March i,J I was called for, and ordered by the general to tell
the Englishy that if any more made their escape, they would bum
the rest of the prisoners. He that took me, was unwilling to
let me speak with any of the prisoners, as we marched; but on
the morning of the second day, he being appointed to guard the
rear, I was put into the hands of my other master, who permitted
me to speak to my wife, when I overtook her, and to walk with
her to help her in her journey. On the way, we discoursed of
the happiness of those who had a right to an house not made
with hafuis, eternal in the heavens; and God for a father^ and
friend ; as also, that it was our reasonable duty, quietly to submit
to the will of God, and to say, the will of the Lord be done. My
wife told me her strength of body began to fail, and that I must
expect to part with her; saying, she hoped God would preserve
my life, and the life of some, if not all of our children, with us;
and commended to me, under God, the care of them. She never
spake any discontented word as to what had befallen us, but with
suitable expressions justified God in what had happened. We
soon made a halt, in which time my chief surviving master came
up, upon which I was put upon marching with the foremost, and
so made to take my last farewell of my dear wife, ^e desire of
my eyes, and companion in many mercies and afflictions. Upon
our separation from each other, we asked for each other, grace
sufficient, for what God should call us to: After our being
parted from one another, she spent the few remaining minutes

APPENDIX 459

of her stay, in reading the holy scriptures; which she was wont
personally every day to delight her soul in reading, praying,
meditating on, and over, by herself, in her closet, over and
above what she heard out of them in our family worship. I was
made to wade over a small river, and so were all the English^ the
water above knee deep, the stream very swift; and after that to
travel up a small mountain; my strength was almost spent, before
I came to the top of it: No sooner had I overcome the diffi-
culty of that ascent, but I was permitted to sit down, and be un-
burthened of my pack; I sat pitying those who were behind, and
intreated my master to let me go down and help my wife; but he
refused and would not let me stir from him. I asked each of
the prisoners (as they passed by me) after her, and heard that
passing through the above said river, she fell down, and was
plunged over head and ears in the water; after which she travelled
not far, for at the foot of that mountain, the cruel and blood-
thirsty savage who took her, slew her with his hatchet at one
stroke, the tidings of which were very awful : And yet such was
the hard-heartedness of the adversary, that my tears were reck-
oned to me as a reproach. My loss, and the loss of my children
was great, our hearts were so filled with sorrow, that nothing but
the comfortable hopes of her being taken away in mercy, to her-
self, from the evils we were to see, feel, and suffer under, (and
joined to the assembly of the spirits of just men made perfect, to
rest in peace, d^XiAjoy unspeakable and full of glory ; and the good
pleasure of God thus to exercise us) could have kept us from
sinking under, at that time. . . .

We were again called upon to march, with a far heavier burden
on my spirits , than on my back, I begged of God to overrule in
his providence, that the corpse of one so dear to me, and of one
whose spirit he had taken to dwell with him in glory, might meet
with a christian burial, and not be left for meat to the fowls of
the air, and beasts of the earth : A mercy that God graciously
vouchsafed to grant. For God put it into the hearts of my
neighbors, to come out as far as she lay, to take up her corpse,
carry it to the town, and decently to bury it soon after. In our
march they killed a sucking infant of one of my neighbors; and
before night a girl of about eleven years of age. I was made to

460 AMERICAN PROSE

mourn, at the consideration of my flock's being so far a fiock of
slaughter, many being slain in the town, and so many murdered
in so few miles from the town; and from fears what we must yet
expect, from such who delightfully imbrued their hands in the
blood of so many of his people. When we came to our lodging
place, an Indian captain from the eastward^ spake to my master
about killing me, and taking off my scalp. I lifted up my heart
to God, to implore his grace and mercy in such a time of need;
and afterwards I told my master, if he intended to kill me, I de-
sired he would let me know of it; assuring him that my death,
after a promise of quarter, would bring the guilt of blood upon
him. He told me he would not kill me : We laid down and
slept, for God sustained and kept us.

[From The Redeemed Captive returning to Zion, or a Faithful History of
Remarkable Occurrences in the Captivity and Deliverance of Mr. John fVil-
Hams, Minister of the Gospel at Deerfield^ who, in the Desolation which befeU
that Plantation, by an Incursion of the French and Indians, was by them car-
ried away, with his family and his Neighbourhood, into Canada, Drawn by
himself, 1707. The text is that of the sixth edition, Greenfield, Mass., iSoo.]

THE FUTURE STATE OF NORTH AMERICA

Thirdly, of the Future State of North America, — Here we
find a vast Stock of proper Materials for the Art and Ingenuity
of Man to work upon : — Treasures of immense Worth, conceard
from the poor ignorant aboriginal Natives ! The Curious have
observ'd, that the Progress of Humane Literature (like the Sun)
is from the East to the West; thus has it travelled thro' Asia and
Europe, and now is arrived at the Eastern Shore of America.
As the Celestial Light of the Gospel was directed here by the
Finger of 'God, it will doubtless, finally drive the long! long!
Night of Heathenish Darkness from Amenca: — So Arts and
Sciences will change the Face of Nature in their Tour from
Hence over the Appalachian Mountains to the Western Ocean;
and as they march thro' the vast Desert, the Residence of wild
Beasts will be broken up, and their obscene Howl cease forever;
— Instead of which, the Stones and Trees will dance together at

APPENDIX 461

the Music of Orpheus^ — the Rocks will disclose their hidden
Gems, — and the inestimable treasures of Gold & Silver will be
broken up. Huge Mountains of Iron Ore are already discovered;
and vast Stores are reserved for future Generations: this Metal
more useful than Gold or Silver, will employ Millions of Hands,
not only to form the martial Sword, and peaceful Share, alter-
nately; but an Infinity of Utensils improved in the Exercise of
Art, and Handicraft amongst Men. Nature thro* all her Works
has stamp'd Authority on this Law, namely, "that all fit Matter
shall be improved to its best Purposes." — Shall not then those
vast Quarries that teem with mechanic Stone, — those for Structure
be piled into great Cities, — and those for Sculpture into Statues,
to perpetuate the Honor of renowned Heroes; — even those who
shall NOW save their country. O ! Ye unborn Inhabitants of
America ! should this Page escape its destined Conflagration at the
Yearns End, and these Alphabetical Letters remain legible , — when
your Eyes behold the Sun after he has rolled the Seasons round for
two or three Centuries more, you will know that in Anno Domini
1758, we dream* d of your Times,

[From An Astronomical Diary : or, an Almanack For the Year of our
Lord Christ, 17^8. By Nathaniel Ames.]

AN AMERICAN FARMER

As you are the first enlightened European I have ever had the
pleasure of being acquainted with, you will not be surprised that
I should, according to your earnest desire and my promise, ap-
pear anxious of preserving your friendship and correspondence.
By your accounts, I observe a material difference subsists between
your husbandry, modes, and customs, and ours; everything is
local; could we enjoy the advantages of the English farmer, we
should be much happier, indeed; but this wish, like many others,
implies a contradiction; and could the English farmers have some
of those privileges we possess, they would be the first of their
class in the world. Good and evil, I see, are to be found in all
societies, and it is in vain to seek for any spot where those in-
gredients are not mixed. I therefore rest satisfied, and thank

462 AMERICAN PROSE

God that my lot is to be an American farmer, instead of an Rus-
sian boor, or an Hungarian peasant. I thank you kindly for the
idea however dreadful, which you have given me of their lot and
condition; your observations have confirmed me in the justness
of my ideas, and I am happier now than I thought myself before.
It is strange that misery, when viewed in others, should become
to us a sort of real good, though I am far from rejoicing to hear
that there are in the world, men so thoroughly wretched; they
are no doubt as harmless, industrious, and willing to work as we
are. Hard is their fate, to be thus condemned to a slavery worse
than that of our negroes. Yet when young, I entertained some
thoughts of selling my farm. I thought it afforded but a dull rep-
etition of the same labours and pleasures. I thought the former
tedious and heavy, the latter few and insipid; but when I came
to consider myself as divested of my farm, I then found the world
so wide, and every place so full, that I began to fear lest there
should be no room for me. My farm, my house, my barn, pre-
sented to my imagination, objects from which I adduced quite
new ideas; they were more forcible than before. Why should I
not find myself happy, said I, where my father was before? He
left me no good books, it is true; he gave me no other education
than the art of reading and writing; but he left me a good farm,
and his experience; he left me free from debts, and no kind of
difficulties to struggle with. I married, and this perfectly recon-
ciled me to my situation; my wife rendered my house all at once
chearf ul and pleasing : it no longer appeared gloomy and solitary
as before ; when I went to work in my fields, I worked with more
alacrity and sprightliness; I felt that I did not work for myself
alone, and this encouraged me much. My wife would often come
with her knitting in her hand, and sit under the shady trees,
praising the straightness of my furrows, and the docility of my
horses; this swelled my heart and made every thing light and
pleasant, and I regretted that I had not married before. I felt
myself happy in my new situation; and where is that situation
which can confer a more substantial system of felicity, than that
of an American farmer, possessing freedom of action, freedom of
thoughts, ruled by a mode of government which requires but little
from us? I owe nothing, but a pepper com to my country, a

APPENDIX 463

•

small tribute to government, with loyalty and due respect; I
know no other landlord, than the Lord of all land, to whom I owe
the most sincere gratitude. My father left me three hundred
and seventy-one acres of land, forty-seven of which are good
timothy meadow, an excellent orchard, a good hbuse, and a sub-
stantial barn. It is my duty to think how happy I am, that he
lived to build and to pay for all these improvements; what are the
labours which I have to undergo, what are my fatigues when
compared to his, who had every thing to do, from the first tree
he felled, to the finishing of his house? Every year I kill from
1500 to 2000 weight of pork, 1200 of beef, half a dozen of good
wethers in harvest : of fowls my wife has always a great flock :
what can I with more? My negroes are tolerably faithful and
healthy; by a long series of industry and honest dealings, my
father left behind him the name of a good man; I have but to
tread his paths to be happy and a good man like him. I know
enough of the law to regulate my little concerns with propriety,
nor do I dread its power; these are the grand outlines of my
situation, but as I can feel much more than I am able to express,
I hardly know how to proceed. When my first son was born, the
whole train of my ideas was altered; never was there a charm
that acted so quickly and so powerfully; I ceased to ramble in
imagination through the wide world: my excursions since have
not exceeded the bounds of my farm, and all my principal
pleasures are now centred within its scanty limits : but, at the
same time, there is not an operation belonging to it, in which I
do not find some food for useful reflexions. This is the reason
I suppose, that when you was here, you used, in your refined
stile, to denominate me the farmer of feelings; how rude must
those feelings be in him who daily holds the axe or the plough !
how much more refined on the contrary those of the European,
whose mind is improved by education, example, books, and by
every acquired advantage ! Those feelings, however, I will de-
lineate as well as I can, agreeably to your earnest request. When
I contemplate my wife, by my fireside, while she either spins,
knits, darns, or suckles our child, I cannot describe the various
emotions of love, of gratitude, of conscious pride, which thrill
in my heart, and often overflow in involuntary tears. I feel the

464 AMERICAN PROSE

necessity, the sweet pleasure of acting my part, the part of an
husband and father, with an attention and propriety which may
entitle me to my good fortune. It is true these pleasing images
vanish with the smoke of my pipe; but though they disappear
from my mind,* the impression they have made on my heart is
indellible. When I play with the infant, my warm imagination
runs forward, and eagerly anticipates his future temper and con-
stitution. I would willingly open the book of fate, and know in
which page his destiny is delineated; alas! where is the father
who in those moments of paternal extacy, can delineate one half
the thoughts which dilate his heart? I am sure I cannot; then
again I fear for the health of those who are become so dear to
me and in their sicknesses I severely pay for the joys I experi-
enced while they were well. Whenever I go abroad, it is always
involuntarily. I never return home without feeling some pleas-
ing emotion, which I often suppress as useless and foolish. The
instant 1 enter on my own land, the bright idea of property, of
exclusive right, of independence, exalts my mind. Precious soil,
I say to myself, by what singular custom of law is it, that thou wast
made to constitute the riches of the freeholder? What should
we American farmers be, without the distinct possession of that
soil? It feeds, it clothes us; from it we draw even a great exu-
berancy, our best meat, our richest drink, the very honey of our
bees come from this privileged spot. No wonder we should
thus cherish its possession, no wonder that so many Europeans
who have never been able to say, that such portion of land was
theirs, cross the Atlantic to realize that happiness. This for-
merly rude soil has been converted by my father into a pleasant
farm, and in return it has established all our rights; on it is
founded our rank, our freedom, our power as citizens, our impor-
tance, as inhabitants of such a district. These images, I must
confess, I always behold with pleasure, and extend them as far
as my imagination can reach : for this is what may be called the
true, and the only philosophy of an American farmer. Pray do
not laugh in thus seeing an artless countryman tracing himself
through the simple modifications of his life; remember that you
have required it; therefore with candour, though with diffidence,
I endeavor to follow the thread of my feelings; but I cannot tell

APPENDIX 465

you all. Often when I plough my ground, I place my little boy
on a chair, which screws to the beam of the plough, — its motion,
and that of the horses please him; he is perfectly happy, and
begins to chat. As I lean over the handle, various are the
thoughts which croud into my mind. I am now doing for him,
I say, what my father formerly did for me; may God enable him
to live, that he may perform the same operations, for the same
purposes, when I am worn out and old ! I relieve his mother of
some trouble, while I have him with me; the oderiferous furrow
exhilerates his spirits, and seems to do the child a great deal of
good, for he looks more blooming since I have adopted that prac-
tice ; can more pleasure, more dignity, be added to that primary
occupation? The father thus ploughing with his child, and to
feed his family, is inferior only, to the emperor of China, plough-
ing as an example to his kingdom.

[From Letters from an American Farmer^ describing Certain Provincial Sit'
uations, Manners, and Customs, and conveyit^ Some Idea of the State of the
People of North America, Written to a friend in England, by J. Hector St
John [Cr^vecoeur], a Farmer in Pennsylvania, 1782.]

Printed in the United States of America.

STUDIES IN AMERICAN LITERATURE.

A Text- Book for
Academies and High Schools.

CHARLES NOBLE,

Professor of English Language and Rhetoric in Iowa College,
12mo. Cloth, $1.00,

** It has the great text- book merit, that it is tangible, while at

the same time it contrives to unite with this scientific quality

true hterary appreciation."

Stockwell Axson,

Adelphi College, Brooklyn, N, K

" It is so preeminently a book that can be put into students*

hands, that it deserves special commendation. In it Mr. Noble

presents the technicalities of literary criticism in such a way that

the student, unaware, must needs be developed in a power of

literary appreciation. It is a book whose charm of method will

find a warm endorsement among teachers of English. It is

that rare thing, a good text-book."

Harriet L. Mason,

Drexel Institute, Philadelphia,

" A book full of interest, and especially rich in material on the

early history of our literature."

Edward S. Parsons,

Colorado College, Colorado Springs,

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY,

66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK.

AMERICAN LITERATURE.

KATHARINE LEE BATES,

Wellesley College.
lamo. Cloth. Price, i.oo,

COMMENTS.

" It is a valuable addition to that form of literature which is half bio-
graphical and half critical, and wholly instructive. We do not recall any
handbook of American Literature which breathes so distinctly the spirit and
purpose of the present as this." — A^. V. Home yournal,

" I have no hesitation in pronouncing this thoughtful sketch that you
have just published to be the best written volume that I have ever seen.
The author has knowledge; the book proceeds from unusually full and
accurate acquaintance with American Letters. The suggestions for class-
room use seem to me admirable." — Albert H. Smyth, Central High
School, Philadelphia, ^«-

"I am delighted with the sympathetic treatment and critical insight of
Bates' American Literature. The uncommon excellence of its style makes
it a part of the literature it describes." — Caroune Ladd Crew, Friends*
School, WilmingtoH, Del.

" It is a pleasure to pick up such a neat little volume. It is hard to lay
it down after one begins. The combination of history and literature is very
happy and the development of literature, side by side with the material and
political progress of the country, cannot fail to be of great service to teacher
and student." — Frederick A. Vogt, Principal Central High School^
Buffalo, ISr.Y.

" I have no doubt this book will be a great success, filling well a gap;
for no small book that I am familiar with compares as well as this the
authors who belong together: it seems more than simply chronological or
descriptive ; it weighs and balances." — Frances A. Mathbs, High Sckoe'
Portsmouth, N.H.

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY,

66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK.

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